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Jewish villains out to destroy Jesus are a staple of Ukrainian Catholic church pageants in the U.S. The Vatican has remained silent.
At a pizza restaurant in Baltimore last year, a church youth group performed a Ukrainian Christmas pageant that promised patrons “carols, jokes and well wishes for a great year ahead.”
What the audience received was a character called Moshko, a Jewish merchant. Moshko was dressed in black with long sideburns — a villain disrupting the Nativity story.
“Wait, don’t be in a hurry, maybe you’ll get something from Moshko,” the character urges townspeople who are trying to celebrate the birth of Jesus.
After the admirers of infant Jesus reject his overtures, Moshko rushes off to betray the infant Jesus to King Herod.
It was a traditional scene in a vertep, the popular Ukrainian pageant performed during the Christmas season, and the actors came from St. Michael the Archangel Ukrainian Catholic Church in suburban Philadelphia.
Verteps draw on Ukraine’s rich culture, weaving together caroling, dancing, brightly embroidered shirts called vyshyvanky, and elaborate floral crowns into a show that runs for about 10 to 25 minutes. The storylines vary. Many pageants do not include the blatant antisemitic stereotype of the devious Jew who sets out to sabotage Christ. But plenty do.
Ukrainian Catholic religious leaders in the U.S. — appointed to their posts by the pope — have been photographed at verteps featuring the bad-guy Jewish character. Such pageants are also promoted in many instances by churches that they oversee.
They include the church’s highest-ranking leader in the U.S., Metropolitan Archbishop Borys Gudziak, who heads the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in the United States. Gudziak addressed and then joined the audience for a performance by the St. Michael group days after it performed in Baltimore, a moment documented in photos the church posted to Facebook.
Gudziak was deeply familiar with the problematic elements of verteps.
Fifteen years ago, when he was running the largest Catholic university in Ukraine, Gudziak and two colleagues penned an emotional call to remove the Jewish character, often referred to using the antisemitic slur “zhyd,” from performances. He described a sense of foreboding each holiday season.
“At the moment of the highest spiritual culmination of holy Christmas, the vertep ‘Zhyd’ will once again burst into our home — and the seed of evil that the vertep performance was meant to uproot will once again make a nest in our soul,” Gudziak and his colleagues wrote.
In 2019, Pope Francis appointed him to the position of Metropolitan Archbishop of Philadelphia, charged with overseeing U.S. districts for the Ukrainian Catholic church. Gudziak continued to call for friendship between Jews and Catholics. He is on a committee of Interfaith Philadelphia and released a statement following the Capital Jewish Museum shooting last year that condemned antisemitism: “As Catholics, we are called not only to reject such hatred, but to actively foster mutual understanding, respect, and solidarity with the Jewish people.”
But despite these expressions of solidarity, churches within Gudziak’s own archeparchy (the equivalent of an archdiocese) have promoted, organized or hosted pageants featuring negative depictions of Jews. So have other Ukrainian Catholic churches and institutions in the U.S.
The Forward compiled and reviewed video of 10 pageants in the U.S. since 2020 that feature a Jewish character named “zhyd,” “Moshko” or “Chaim,” and sometimes his wife, usually named Sarah. All were posted to social media, in many cases by the churches themselves.
The pageants mix and match a few motifs, all showing these two Jews in a negative light as they try to lure Christians to commit sin. Some tempt the faithful with goods, loans or liquor. Some mock believers for worshipping Christ; curse Christians; summon and collude with the devil, or betray baby Jesus to King Herod, who is seeking to kill him.
Most of the actors playing the zhyd role wore what look to be peyos, the sidelocks traditionally worn by Orthodox Jews. In one instance, the character wore an exaggerated fake nose.
The Forward located photos from an additional eight pageants for which video is not publicly available that show actors with what appear to be peyos or a fake nose.
Those U.S. pageants are part of a global phenomenon, centered in Europe. A Forward review of more than 200 videos of recent verteps internationally associated with the Ukrainian Catholic Church found that when a Jewish character was included, that character in nearly every case was portrayed in a negative light.
The verteps with offensive scenes are almost exclusively performed in the Ukrainian language and have gone largely unnoticed by Jewish organizations in the U.S.
Presented with the Forward’s findings, both the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League raised concerns about the performances.
“The caricatures in these celebrations, depicting Jews as greedy or aligned with evil, are inherently antisemitic and are part and parcel of the same dangerous myths that have fueled violence and pogroms against Jewish communities for centuries,” Ken Jacobson, deputy national director of the ADL, said in an email.
In most instances, the video of the pageants was posted online by official church social media accounts. Gudziak was not the only church official to attend; Bishop Paul Chomnycky in Connecticut and Bishop Benedykt Aleksiychuk in Chicago have also attended pageants that featured a Jewish character.
In 2025, Chomnycky’s eparchy posted photos of the bishop speaking at a holiday event that included a vertep featuring a little boy in peyos. The Forward was unable to obtain video of that performance.
The previous year, Aleksiychuk attended and spoke at a festival where photos posted to social media show at least four verteps had Jewish characters. Video from the one performance for which video was publicly available, which was in Ukrainian, has the Jew cursing the faithful, summoning the devil, and lamenting about not being able to sell alcohol. Aleksiychuk posed for a photo with a different vertep cast, which also had an actor in peyos.
In response to a request for comment from the Forward, Gudziak said in a statement on behalf of himself and the other bishops that he did not condone offensive depictions.
“Christmas pageants have included characters that are objectionable, including ones that are offensive to the Jewish community. I do not condone this as a pastor, educator and scholar,” he said. “We will heighten our vigilance and work with our clergy and parishes to make sure that such expressions will not be repeated.”
He noted that Ukrainian Catholics and Ukrainian-Americans have themselves been hurt by stereotypes, and that his church has been shut down and banned in parts of Ukraine now occupied by Russia.
“We highly value our good relations with the Jewish community in the United States and in Ukraine and are most grateful for the many expressions of Jewish solidarity as our community faces existential threats,” Gudziak said, a reference to Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
The Catholic Church is composed of 24 distinct churches, with around 99% of the world’s estimated 1.3 billion Catholics belonging to what is officially known as the Latin Church but generally referred to as the Catholic Church. The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is the second-largest Catholic church, with around five million adherents.
While it has some distinct practices and liturgy, the UGCC ultimately reports to the Vatican and is bound by the Catholic Church’s teachings on Jews. Those include guidance stating any dramatic performances that “seek to shift responsibility from human sin onto this or that historical group, such as the Jews, can only be said to obscure a core gospel truth.”
Pope Leo XIV, who became pontiff last year, has come under fire from some Jewish organizations — mostly over his criticism of Israel’s war with Iran — but has called for “a world without antisemitism” and stressed that the Church “does not tolerate” it.
The Vatican did not respond to repeated requests for comment from the Forward about antisemitism in verteps organized by the UGCC. The International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations, an umbrella group that describes itself as representing “world Jewry in dialogue with the Vatican,” also did not respond to requests for comment.
A play with deep roots
Verteps are theatrical performances rooted in Ukrainian folk tradition that mix an account of the Christmas story with characters from early modern Ukraine, transporting Ukrainian Christians to ancient Bethlehem as Mary gives birth to Jesus. The juxtaposition is meant to draw a parallel between the lessons from the Nativity and those that the church beginning in the early 19th century wanted to impart onto Ukrainians.
Indeed, the UGCC isn’t the only institution that stages verteps. Various Ukrainian Orthodox denominations also put on the pageants, as do town councils, schools, civic organizations, and simply groups of friends and neighbors, and many have been updated by removing the offensive elements or replacing them with contemporary characters.
In the traditional vertep script, Jesus, Mary and Joseph face off against the devil and contend with murderous intentions by King Herod. Meanwhile, Ukrainians meant to represent everyday Christians celebrate the Nativity while resisting worldly temptations — merchandise, loans and alcohol — that are often personified by a group of ethnic villains: a Jew, his wife and a Roma character often referred to using a slur.
Throughout the performance, this evil troika wreaks havoc, conspiring with the devil to hurt Jesus, while tempting Ukrainian villagers with goods or alcohol. “If the peasant doesn’t drink, how will Moshko make money?” the Jewish character asks the audience in one popular version of the play.
Verteps were suppressed during Soviet control of Ukraine, reemerging after the fall of communism as a cultural touchstone for many Ukrainians. Russia’s war against Ukraine has supercharged support for Ukrainian nationalism — including verteps.
“People brand this as cherishing Ukrainian tradition, especially nowadays when cherishing tradition is portrayed as resistance to Russian aggression,” said Marta Havryshko, a visiting professor at Clark University who studies nationalism and the Holocaust.
Some scriptwriters have come up with corrective alternatives. For instance, Ukrainian playwright Tetyana Shpaykher produces verteps substituting Vladimir Putin for King Herod and Russian propagandists for the devil — while Sarah and Moshko are entirely absent.
“The Church teaches that God is born to us every year,” Shpaykher told a Ukrainian news outlet last year, “each time within new realities.”
‘Bring everything to the zhyd’
The U.S. performances at issue lean into tradition — and negative portrayals showing Jews as greedy and derisive of Christian faith.
In a January vertep performed at Ukrainian Catholic Church of the Epiphany in Rochester, New York, characters playing the Three Kings rebuke a Jewish merchant for seeking to sell beads to the townspeople, as seen in a video posted to social media and since removed.
In Ukrainian, one king says: “We’re not trading, and we’re not buying, and we don’t need you, zhyd!”
After another announces that they plan to worship the messiah, the zhyd mocks them.
“What does a peasant need the messiah for?” he scoffs. “A peasant must plow, and sow, and learn how to thresh, and bring everything to the zhyd instead of asking God for mercy.”
The zhyd’s response draws on antisemitic stereotypes in which Jews supposedly lived off the labor of others.
The Rochester church did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the Forward about the performance, but other organizations have defended the inclusion of Jewish characters as a reflection of Ukrainian history.
“Vertep characters reflect the social realities and archetypes of the 16th- and 17th-century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, where these folk traditions developed,” Orest Dudyak, head of the Ukrainian American Youth Association in Tampa Bay, wrote in an email in response to the Forward’s outreach. “The tavern keeper character reflects one such historical social role and was traditionally portrayed as a Jewish figure.”
Jewish tavernkeepers were ubiquitous in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which covers much of modern Poland and Ukraine, because the nobility granted a monopoly on liquor sales to the Jewish community in exchange for a series of fees.
Glenn Dynner, author of Yankel’s Tavern: Jews, Liquor, & Life in the Kingdom of Poland, said that the system incentivized tavernkeepers to exploit peasants in order to cover the exorbitant fees owed to the local nobleman. But he emphasized the stereotype of Jews pressuring Ukrainian peasants to drink themselves into debt was greatly exaggerated.
“The system was based to a large degree on trust,” Dynner said in an interview. His research found many cases of warm relations between Jewish tavernkeepers and villagers.
Yet in the 19th century the regional Catholic church began to blame widespread drunkenness on Jews, rather than the nobility who converted their surplus grain into vodka for the local peasants. The church propaganda helped solidify the notion that Jews were undermining society.
Dynner, a history professor at the University of Virginia, said in an interview that the Jew became a proxy for anger that otherwise would have been directed at the local nobility in a feudal society. “That’s the way it almost always works,” he said. “There’s a Jewish figure you prop up to siphon off any resentment.”
The resentment has endured through the centuries. In 2016, the director of Lviv’s regional library told a journalist that 17th century Cossack leader Bohdan Khmelnytskyi murdered Jews because they “owned the taverns, and they sold vodka on credit — when people couldn’t pay, they confiscated their property.” Khmelnytskyi’s men killed hundreds of thousands of Jews.
The nuance Dynner described — that Jewish tavernkeepers had complex and sometimes positive relationships with their Christian customers — is almost always missing from the depictions of Jews in verteps.
When Dudyak’s Ukrainian youth group performed in January at Epiphany of Our Lord Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in St. Petersburg, Florida, two Jewish characters were shown wearing what appeared to be peyos. One was referred to as “Moshko,” and together they sought to tempt Christians with goods and loans.
“Get out of here, Moshko, because we’re not going to trade,” a boy playing an angel replies to the Jew. A photo shows the two Jewish characters counting money off stage; it’s common for verteps to have the Jews collect money from the playgoers at the end of the performance.
The Rev. Bohdan Barytskyy, pastor of the St. Petersburg church, apologized for the performance, which he said his church had not organized. “If any individual was hurt or offended by aspects of the performance, I sincerely regret that pain, and I believe such concerns deserve to be heard seriously and respectfully,” Barytskyy wrote in an email.
“I also want to emphasize that I have personally expressed concerns for many years regarding certain traditional portrayals that occasionally appear in some vertep performances, including in previous parishes where I served,” he added. “I have consistently encouraged that depictions which may be perceived as offensive, hurtful, or rooted in outdated stereotypes should not be included, because they do not reflect authentic Christian values or the spirit of respect toward other peoples and faith communities.”
Dudyak, leader of the youth group that performed the play, said in response to an inquiry from the Forward that his troupe had “made a conscious effort to avoid exaggerated or mocking” depictions in the performance.
Other organizers say exaggeration is sometimes the point.
The zhyd in a January vertep organized by the Protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary Ukrainian Catholic Church in Bridgeport, Connecticut, wore a prosthetic nose and danced around with a Gucci bag.
“Like any play, people put the make-up, people put the costumes — and there was a beard, there was glasses, there was a nose, yes there was,” the Rev. Ivan Mazuryk, who runs the church, said in an interview. “But just to make it clear who the character was.”
‘Zhyd’ sparks controversy
Gudziak, the UGCC archbishop based in Philadelphia, was born in Syracuse, New York, but spent years working in Ukraine before being appointed to serve as the church’s senior leader in the U.S.
While he was head of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, a city in western Ukraine, Gudziak sparked a nationwide discussion over how Jews were depicted in verteps. In a 2011 article in Ukrainian that Guzdiak wrote along with two other university leaders, he argued that the zhyd character was contrary to Catholic values.
Gudziak acknowledged that the zhyd had a long history as part of verteps, and wrote that Jewish and non-Jewish Ukrainians lived side-by-side and sometimes found each other’s customs humorous. But he added that theatrical festivities would spill into the street with serious consequences. “In Ukrainian villages and towns, flocks of boys would chase a Jewish peer down the street, chanting: ‘Zhyd! Zhyd!’”
He discouraged use of the zhyd as part of university verteps and exhorted other Ukrainian Catholics to follow suit.
The appeal set off a national debate that lost steam following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and occupation of eastern areas of the country in 2014, which preceded its full-scale invasion eight years later. Russian propaganda claimed its conflict with Ukraine entailed fighting Nazis, and weaponized claims of antisemitism as a justification for invading the country.
That made it difficult for Ukrainian Jews and others concerned about genuine instances of antisemitism — still widespread in a country that has failed to seriously grapple with its collaboration with Nazi forces during the Holocaust.
“Usually, when we hear someone shouting that ‘Ukrainians are antisemites,’ the Kremlin is involved,” Volodymyr Butkevych, a Ukrainian legal scholar and human rights lawyer, told Radio Free Europe during a 2021 interview about antisemitic expressions in verteps.
This has led to a dynamic in which even Ukrainian Catholic leaders who maintain close ties to American Jews nevertheless engage with verteps that mock Jews.
The Rev. Bohdan Hedz, the leader of St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Church in Riverhead on Long Island, joined a 2022 Holocaust memorial service at a local synagogue to condemn antisemitism and raise awareness about the war in Ukraine.
“Evil will not prevail,” he said during the event. “My heart goes out to the Jewish community.”
Hedz even said that as a child he had tended to the abandoned Jewish graveyard in his Ukrainian town.
But this December Hedz appeared in the front row of a vertep at his church that featured the familiar Moshko character with peyos and a fake Yiddish accent who tempts the Three Kings and betrays Christ to Herod. He did not respond to calls or emails from the Forward to the church.
Some leaders of the Ukrainian church in the U.S. have bristled at questions over whether they host verteps that present Jews in offensive ways — and say that they have made efforts to improve depictions.
The Rev. Daniel Schaicoski, the leader of Immaculate Conception Ukrainian Catholic Church outside Detroit, explained to the Forward that a long-haired character wearing a hat in a vertep produced by a church-affiliated school was not meant to represent a Jew but rather played a Willy Wonka-style role and handed out candy to the audience at the end of the show.
Schaicoski said that when he arrived at Immaculate Conception more than two decades ago the vertep included a Moshko character, which he insisted be removed from future productions.
“I said this is not right and people could see it — on video or whatever — and misunderstand,” Schaicoski said in a phone interview. He added that bishops from the Ukrainian church had circulated a letter to priests several years ago asking them to make sure that their verteps did not include offensive characters.
But when asked about photo albums from verteps at his church in 2017 and 2019 that both featured a character wearing a skullcap with artificial sidelocks attached — similar in appearance to how zhyd characters are often portrayed in verteps — Schaicoski refused to answer additional questions in a text exchange.
“We don’t do that. I am here for 30 years, we never did that. But I see you will not stop this shameless persecution!” Schaicoski wrote in a text message afterward. “You hunt people and then make yourselves victims, shame on you.”
Other church leaders also stopped responding when asked about vertep photographs.
The Rev. Hugo Soutus, who leads Dormition of the Mother of God Ukrainian Catholic Church in Phoenix, initially responded to an inquiry about a vertep hosted by his church where photos show a character wearing a black hat and what appeared to be artificial sidelocks by requesting more information. He signed off: “Shalom!”
But when sent a link to photos of the vertep, including a post shared by his church, Soutos stopped responding. The Facebook post has since been deleted.
Others were even more curt.
Photos of performances in 2023 and 2024 at St. Joseph the Betrothed Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church in Chicago show included a character with a black hat and sidelocks. One of the images posted by the church to social media shows the character holding beads, which are often hawked by Jewish vertep characters.
Church leaders did not respond to emails asking about the character and a woman who answered the phone at the church said: “Yes, I remember that email — that email was forwarded to our lawyer, OK? Thank you,” before hanging up.
Another Chicagoland church, the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Ukrainian Catholic Church in Palos Park, also did not respond to emails asking about a photo of a character wearing a similar outfit in its vertep last year.
“There’s no one here to help you,” a receptionist at the church said before hanging up on a Forward reporter.
A long Catholic struggle
The Catholic Church has a long history of theatrical productions that demonize and scapegoat Jews. Unlike verteps that portray the birth story of Jesus, passion plays, which originated in 12th century Europe, collectively blamed Jews for the death of Jesus and often presented Jews as evil — sometimes wearing horns.
Nostra Aetate, a declaration on Catholic-Jewish relations released as part of Vatican II in 1965, declared that Jews could no longer be held responsible as a group for killing Jesus and led to the withdrawal of official church blessings for passion plays that promoted that narrative.
But it still took decades of concerted lobbying by Jewish organizations, led by the American Jewish Committee, to root out antisemitic portrayals in the Oberammergau Passion Play, which is performed once every ten years in Germany and is considered the most prominent production of its kind in the world.
Producers of the Oberammergau began to make reforms in 1990 — 25 years after Nostra Aetate — and it would take another 30 years for the AJC to declare a kind of victory in 2022, when the play began to embrace Jewish rituals in a positive light.
Official Vatican guidelines, detailed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in a 1988 policy paper focused on passion plays but expounding on “general principles” of church teaching, strongly discourage negative portrayals of Jewish characters. The document states that theatrical productions — “extraliturgical depictions of the sacred mysteries” — should “conform to the highest possible standards of biblical interpretation and theological sensitivity.” The paper also quoted Pope John Paul II’s declaration that Catholic teaching should present Jews “in an honest and objective manner, free from prejudices and without any offenses.”
But it can be difficult to enforce this guidance at the parish level. While the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is technically controlled by the Vatican, its relationship with Rome is often uneven. For decades, Rome has refused to elevate the UGCC to a “patriarchate,” a status that would grant it more autonomy from the Vatican. Analysts suggest Vatican officials have rejected these repeated requests in part over concerns that the move would provoke the Russian Orthodox Church, which claims Ukraine as its religious territory.
Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head of the Kyiv-based UGCC — and who himself hosted a vertep with a character in peyos in 2024 — has in turn criticized the Vatican over its response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, telling local media in 2023 that “the pope does not fully understand the pain of Ukraine” and that “all the pope tried to do for Ukraine after the full-scale invasion failed.” In office for a year, Pope Leo has not significantly shifted the church’s approach in Ukraine.
Language is also a barrier. Like the religious services, most verteps take place in Ukranian, making it difficult for officials outside the church to understand what’s being performed.
Verteps themselves are often organized by individual church members. In other cases, local Ukrainian theater troupes perform versions that were created without input from church leaders. St. Sophia Ukrainian Catholic Church in suburban Raleigh, North Carolina, said that was the case with the vertep they hosted in January that featured Moshko betraying Jesus to King Herod.
“We will not use this version of the vertep again,” the church wrote in a statement to the Forward, adding that it would ensure future performances “align with the values of our Church and with the teachings of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which firmly rejects antisemitism.”
But, to date, none of the Catholic institutions that could exert formal pressure on the UGCC to stamp out antisemitic verteps have been willing to comment publicly on the performances.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which has taken a firm stand against far-right Catholic pundits who have trafficked in antisemitism, declined to weigh in on the Forward’s findings.
The Catholic Church’s inaction on verteps is at odds with the new pope’s message on Jews and the church.
Pope Leo met last month with representatives from New York City’s Jewish federation and emphasized the church’s “firm stand against antisemitism.”
Citing Nostra Aetate’s call to reject discrimination and harassment — and “shared spiritual ancestry in Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph” — Pope Leo said: “In a world still wounded by division and conflict, it called us to move beyond past misunderstandings toward collaboration for the common good.
The post Jewish villains out to destroy Jesus are a staple of Ukrainian Catholic church pageants in the U.S. The Vatican has remained silent. appeared first on The Forward.
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Synagogue attacks were part of massive ISIS-inspired plot last week, FBI says
(JTA) — A 21-year-old man from Valencia, Pennsylvania, suggested poisoning food in synagogues as part of a mass attack in support of the Islamic State group last week, according to the FBI.
The suspect, Jonathan Kramer, said in an online forum using the pseudonym “Hamza Al Rashid” that “i wish to inject ricin or cyanide into places such as grocery stores inside water/food with a syringe, or going to food events, preferably synagogues and putting the chemicals in their food and drink…,” according to a sworn FBI affidavit.
The prospective poisoning was part of a broader plot of mass violence that included “repeated attempts to encourage and coordinate violence through encrypted platforms, such as advising others on attack methods, discussing chemical poisons, arson, vehicle attacks, drone delivery explosives and firearm based assaults,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Richard Evanchec said at a press conference last week.
The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh said in a security update on Friday that no synagogue had been specified by the FBI. , “We are in close contact with our law enforcement partners and federal prosecutors, and if we learn of anything concerning, we will share that immediately,” the organization noted.
Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Eisenberg announced last Tuesday that Kramer was “preparing for a mass shooting that could have taken many lives, having already secured a rifle and approximately 190 rounds of ammunition for what he called his ‘mission.”
Efforts to reach Kramer’s public defender Jake Morrison were unsuccessful.
FBI agents arrested Kramer in a hotel parking lot in Cranberry, Pennsylvania, the Justice Department said. They seized a semiautomatic rifle, five rifle magazines, a rifle bipod and scope, a total of 190 rounds of rifle ammunition and about 30 knives following a search of him, his house and his hotel room.
Kramer was charged with receiving a firearm and ammunition believing they would be used to commit terrorism. He appeared in court last Wednesday to waive a preliminary hearing, according to CBS News. A court date has not been set for Kramer’s next proceedings, the network reported.
Kramer had been on the FBI’s radar since 2023, when he was charged by Pennsylvania state authorities “for his role in a plot to commit a mass casualty incident” and sent to a juvenile detention facility, FBI special agent Gregory Battaglia said in a sworn affidavit.
Nearly eight years ago, 11 worshippers were killed at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Proposed U.S. $24.3 billion sale of F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia advances
(JTA) — The State Department has approved a possible $24.3 billion sale of 48 F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia — a move that would make the kingdom the second Middle Eastern country after Israel to have the world’s most powerful combat aircraft.
“This proposed sale will support the foreign policy and national security objectives of the United States by improving the security of a major non-NATO ally,” the department said in a statement.
Israel wants the sale attached to a normalization deal with Saudi Arabia, but that doesn’t appear to be on the horizon. However, there is a small chance that Congress could keep the sale from happening.
When President Donald Trump first confirmed that he was considering the sale last November, Israeli officials told Axios that while they don’t oppose the sale itself, they wanted it “to be subject to Saudi normalization with Israel.”
Although Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly brushed off the deal’s significance last fall, a security source at the time warned on CNN that the possibility of Saudi Arabia acquiring “the same capabilities” as Israel was “very concerning.”
The prime minister was more vocal in his opposition to a July announcement from Trump that he was weighing selling the advanced jets to Turkey as well, telling CNN that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is “not exactly a model ally of the United States.”
Israel has already purchased 50 F-35 jets, in two procurement rounds that occurred in 2016 and in 2017, according to the Israeli Defense Ministry. However, local media reports indicate that two of the 50 have yet to arrive, meaning that just 48 are on the ground – the same number of planes that the State Department has approved for Saudi Arabia’s potential purchase.
Israel would have many more F-35s than Saudi Arabia for the time being, because its Defense Ministry announced in 2024 that it would be procuring 25 more of the planes, slated to begin arriving in 2028. Earlier this year, the Defense Ministry revealed that it would be procuring yet another squadron of the jets, although the quantity remained unclear.
Congressional approval is not assured; wariness of the Saudi regime, stemming in part from the state-sanctioned 2018 murder of a U.S.-based journalist in Turkey, crosses party lines.
The U.S. Arms Export Control Act requires the executive branch of the government to notify Congress regarding major defense equipment sales to most countries. Congress can then deem a country ineligible to participate in a sale through a joint resolution. The president can then veto the resolution, which Congress would need a two-thirds supermajority to override.
Additionally, U.S. law requires the president to ensure that Israel maintains “a qualitative military edge over military threats” when considering arms sales to other Middle Eastern countries. Israel, per the law, must be able “to counter and defeat any credible conventional military threat” from both other nations and “non-state actors.”
“The proposed sale of this equipment and support will not alter the military balance in the region,” the State Department said on Thursday. It called Saudi Arabia “a force for political stability and economic progress in the Gulf region,” adding that the sale would help “deter current and future threats by strengthening its homeland defense.”
The department maintained that not only would the sale improve Saudi Arabia’s defense capabilities, but it would also boost “interoperability” with both U.S. forces and other players from NATO and the region.
As for the potential deal’s logistics, Saudi Arabia has requested 48 of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter Jets, as well as 49 Pratt & Whitney engines, according to the State Department.
The kingdom is also seeking to acquire other non-major defense equipment, such as cryptographic devices, precision navigation, secure communications, simple key loaders and support for electronic warfare databases, maintenance and personnel training.
Producing and delivering these planes can take many years.
Meanwhile, just a day before Trump’s announcement, The New York Times surfaced intelligence concerns that China could acquire F-35 technology by spying on Saudi Arabia or through its partnerships with the kingdom.
U.S. House Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat from Illinois, warned in a statement on X that “Beijing has spent decades stealing American intellectual property” and that this deal could “help them do it.”
“Our own intelligence community is warning that it could put the crown jewels of American military technology within reach of the Chinese Communist Party,” Krishnamoorthi added.
The Biden administration reportedly ended a past F-35 deal with the United Arab Emirates — secured by the first Trump administration — due to similar concerns about the country’s connections to China, as well as to Russia.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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After outcry, Texas lieutenant governor says schools should teach Holocaust books ‘Night,’ ‘Anne Frank’
(JTA) — The lieutenant governor of Texas says his recent call for the state’s public schools to remove “over 2,000 titles” of “dirty, filthy and vulgar books” was not meant to include books about the Holocaust.
Dan Patrick’s statement, provided exclusively to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Friday, comes after a month of confusion following a press conference in which he and a conservative Christian activist threatened schools with potential loss of state funding if they did not comply with his directive to purge their libraries.
“I believe Texas students must learn about the Holocaust, and that includes reading books such as ‘Night’ by Elie Wiesel, ‘The Diary of Anne Frank,’ and other books about the Holocaust,” Patrick told JTA, singling out two books on the removal list he had promoted – one of which, “Night,” that he previously explicitly called for removal from middle schools.
Patrick added that his initiative was “focused on age-inappropriate, sexually explicit books in public school libraries across Texas.” At his earlier press conference, he had directed viewers to an online list compiled by an activist group that features several books about the Holocaust and Jewish identity.
Patrick’s threats have teeth. In Texas, lieutenant governors are more powerful than in many other states, playing central roles in shaping the budget and determining the legislative agenda.
Patrick also appeared to walk back some of the harsher proclamations from his Aug. 19 press conference, at which the Republican had stated, “We’re coming for the books.”
“As the law states, local communities have the right to make their own decisions about their public school libraries,” he told JTA Friday.
The lieutenant governor, who is up for reelection this fall, appeared at the conference with Bonnie Wallace, the head of the activist group Recover America, and told viewers to “go to RecoverAmerica.com.” That group has circulated a list of more than 2,100 “Harmful Books in Libraries.” Its list, which it describes as “books with harmful, sexually explicit, and vulgar content,” includes more than a dozen titles of particular import to Jewish readers.
Recover America’s flagged books include both volumes of Art Spiegelman’s “Maus,” a comic-book adaptation of Frank’s diary and Bernard Malamud’s novel of a blood libel “The Fixer” — all books that have been removed from school districts in Texas and other states in the past amid broader conservative-led library culture wars. In some cases those books were restored to the districts following public outcry, but spurred deeper dialogue about the state of Holocaust education and antisemitism awareness in public schools.
Patrick’s latest push would go much further than a handful of districts, affecting the more than 5.5 million students in public schools across the state.
One book of particular contention on Recover America’s list was “Night,” Elie Wiesel’s bestselling memoir of surviving Auschwitz and Buchenwald, which has been taught in schools for decades. After a Houston Chronicle story noted the book’s inclusion on the Recover America “harmful” list, Patrick initially doubled down on “Night,” saying that it was not appropriate for middle schools owing to its “violence.”
“If ‘Night,’ by Elie Wiesel, were made into a movie, it would likely be rated R,” Patrick wrote on the social network X on Aug. 26. “‘Night,’ which includes depictions of graphic violence and the machine-gunning of babies, should not be available to sixth graders in middle-school libraries. High school is more age-appropriate.”
His tweet appeared to contradict the state’s own K-12 required reading list, passed this summer, which mandates that “Night” be taught in the eighth grade beginning in 2030.
Now, in response to questions from JTA, the lieutenant governor said he would defer to the Texas State Board of Education on the appropriate grade to teach “Night.”
“The State Board of Education decides the appropriate grade level for books and will determine whether ‘Night,’ by Elie Wiesel, is at the appropriate grade level,” Patrick told JTA in his statement.
He continued to insist that books in schools should be held to “FCC standards,” referring to the Federal Communications Commission, an agency that governs broadcasting content and does not regulate publishing.
The head of the Texas Holocaust, Genocide and Antisemitism Advisory Commission, a governor-appointed panel which advised the state on the inclusion of “Night” and other Holocaust texts on its required reading list, did not return a JTA request for comment.
In a statement, the Texas Educational Authority, which drafted the required-reading list, told JTA, “When Texas students learn about the Holocaust, they will be exposed to the horrors of the Holocaust. That is why the SBOE placed the book in 8th Grade to ensure age appropriateness for students.”
At the Emmys this week, when “The Librarians,” a documentary about librarians facing book removal threats, won an award, retired Texas librarian Carolyn Foote joined the producers on the stage and held up a copy of “Night” in protest.
“I felt like it was very symbolic to bring ‘Night,’” Foote, a subject of the film and a co-founder of the librarian activist group FReadom Fighters, told JTA. “Having read it, I just know the importance of not forgetting our past. And that’s part of Elie Wiesel’s whole legacy, is remembrance, and so it just felt very important for me to carry that book, coming from Texas.” Another librarian onstage for the win held up “Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation.”
Elisha Wiesel, Elie’s son and chair of the Elie Wiesel Foundation, told JTA that “Texas deserves credit for recognizing that Holocaust education belongs in the eighth-grade curriculum.” Yet, the younger Wiesel suggested, Patrick’s concerns about the book’s violence were misplaced.
“‘Night’ contains violence because the Holocaust was violent; its purpose is not to shock young people, but to help them understand where hatred and indifference can lead,” he wrote in an email. “With context and guidance, students should not be shielded from this history. They should be equipped to confront it.”
Despite having directed viewers to Recover America’s book list during his press conference, Patrick’s new statement to JTA said, “I do not have a book list.” He pointed instead to a law passed in the state legislature in 2025 regulating school books that he said districts were required to follow.
Yet some districts in the state have removed every book on Recover America’s list from their own libraries out of fear of losing funding, Foote told JTA. While the list nominally contains a ratings system, many of the books do not have a rating.
Besides “Night,” “Maus,” “Anne Frank’s Diary” and “The Fixer,” other books about Judaism and the Holocaust on Recover America’s list of “Harmful Books” include:
- “Annexed,” a young-adult novel about Peter van Pels, who hid in the Amsterdam annex with Anne Frank
- “The Berlin Boxing Club,” a young-adult historical novel based on German boxer Max Schmeling, who helped young Jews during Hitler’s rise to power
- “Black, White and Jewish,” a memoir by Rebecca Walker, the mixed-race Jewish daughter of author Alice Walker
- “Caste: The Origins of our Discontents,” a nonfiction book analyzing the “caste systems” of Nazi Germany. “Caste” had been included on an earlier, Wallace-spearheaded list of books for removal from a Texas public library in a case that the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear in 2025, allowing the removals to proceed.
- “Kasher in the Rye,” a memoir by Jewish comedian Moshe Kasher
- “Pride: the story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag,” a children’s picture-book biography of the pioneering Jewish LGBTQ legislator
- “Sophie’s Choice,” the bestselling Holocaust novel for adults
- “The Violin Maker’s Daughter,” a historical novel about a Jewish family of musicians during the Holocaust
- “White Bird,” a young-reader graphic novel about a Jewish girl in Nazi-occupied France
In response to JTA sharing a list of the above books, Patrick’s statement mentioned only “Night” and Anne Frank by name. The Recover America list is largely made up of romance and fantasy novels, many with an LGBTQ element, while also including classics such as “The Glass Menagerie” and “Cat’s Cradle” and some picture books for children.
Recover America did not immediately return a JTA request for comment Friday on Patrick’s new statement. Wallace, the group’s leader who has also appeared on Patrick’s podcast, previously told the Houston Chronicle that she had “thought long and hard” about including “Night” on her list.
She ultimately did so, she said, because “an eighth-grade student is 13 years old. Do they need to read about soldiers massacring, throwing up babies, and killing them with machine guns?”
She added, “It’s not to say this doesn’t happen in life. And the Holocaust was maybe the worst tragedy in the history of the world.”
For Cameron Samuels, a Jewish alum of Texas public schools and founder of the activist group Students Engaged in Advancing Texas, such efforts do not help Jewish students.
“Non-Jewish people are deciding for us what’s best, and making this public policy,” Samuels said. “We can’t readily access these books and stories. And that makes students feel alone. It also means that our classroom peers are not learning authentic Jewish narratives.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post After outcry, Texas lieutenant governor says schools should teach Holocaust books ‘Night,’ ‘Anne Frank’ appeared first on The Forward.
