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Missouri Jewish leaders advocate for trans rights at state legislature
(JTA) — “Hi, my name is Dan. I’m 11 years old and I like doing magic and circus skills, especially unicycling. I’m here today to testify against House Bill 170, 183, and 337,” a young voice said into the microphone.
“I really like to play sports with my friends, although honestly I’m not very good at it,” he added. “I’d really like the chance to play.”
Dan — a transgender boy whose parents asked that his last name not be used — was the youngest person to testify at the Missouri State House last week in opposition to eight bills heard in the chamber that would restrict trans children from participating in sports that align with their gender identity and limit their access to specialized medical care.
He was also part of a delegation of Missouri’s Jewish community members, alongside a few Christian clergy, that has been consistently appearing at the state Capitol to advocate for trans rights in response to a slew of bills that activists say violate their religious freedoms and cause significant harm to the LGBTQ community.
Daniel Bogard, the rabbi at Central Reform Congregation in St. Louis and the parent of a trans child, was at the State House Jan. 24 and again on Feb. 1 to support those testifying against the bills and to lobby lawmakers against them. He is a frequent visitor to Jefferson City as a trans rights activist, saying the possibility of restrictions on medical care are what scare him the most. One piece of legislation would bar physicians and health care professionals from providing gender affirmation procedures to anyone under 18. It would also deny access to medication like puberty blockers, which are administered to delay the onset of puberty.
“What we want to do is we want to protect kids from unnecessary and harmful surgeries and medications,” said Brad Hudson, a Republican representative and one of the sponsors of the bill. “I say harmful because giving kids puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and even transgender surgery violates the first duty of medicine, do no harm.” (The Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital and other providers say they are generally considered safe to use.)
Hudson also identified himself in his testimony that he is a Christian pastor, and said that his worldview is one in which human beings are created “in the image and likeness of their Creator.”
“Those are the bills that criminalize treating your child as every medical and psychological mainstream organization recommends,” Bogard countered. “And that means parents are left with a choice of not giving these kids the sorts of treatment and care that are best practice according to everything that we know, or fleeing the state, or staying and risking some sort of criminal charge. The one that terrifies me is the idea of DSS [Department of Social Services] agents showing up to my door to take my kid away.”
Bogard, who has been going to the state Capitol for five years now, says the experience of being back at the State Legislature has been simultaneously “awful and affirming.”
With only 25 hours of advance notice, the group going to testify in Jefferson City had to leave St. Louis at 5:30 am in order to make it on time. (Courtesy of Daniel Bogard)
“What’s remarkable is you go in and two-thirds of the people who are sponsoring these bills or testifying in favor of these bills are using overtly Christian theological language when they’re talking about the why,” he explained. “And then you look around and the people who are showing up to protect trans kids are Jews.”
“I’m just so proud of our Jewish community, the way we have shown up around this issue here in Missouri,” Bogard said, remarking on the decades-long history of Jewish-led LGBTQ advocacy in the state. (The founder of the statewide LGBTQ advocacy group PROMO, which is not itself a Jewish group, was founded by Rabbi Susan Talve, one of the founding members of Bogard’s synagogue. Shira Berkowitz, a Jewish summer camp friend of Bogard’s, is the senior director of public policy and advocacy at the organization, and last year, Bogard and Berkowitz launched a summer camp for trans kids.)
The new principal of Saul Mirowitz Jewish Community School, Raquel Scharf-Anderson, made the two-hour drive early on Jan. 24 to testify on behalf of her students.
“I make all of my decisions in the best interest of children,” Scharf-Anderson told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Anything that would impact the students in my school, I want them to see me standing with them.”
The sports bills in particular, she said, would impact trans students at private schools, like Mirowitz.
Over the course of the Jan. 24 hearing, Rachel Aguirre, a special education teacher who ran unsuccessfully for State Senate in the Republican primary in 2022, argued that the government was “founded upon the word of God,” and therefore athletes should only play on teams whose gender matches the sex they were assigned at birth. Nancy Delcour, another witness testifying in favor of the bill, also cited the biblical principle that humankind was created in God’s image, and an attempt to change that is the work of Satan.
Before the nine-hour long hearing was over, another interpretation of the principle of “the image of God” was explored on the hearing room floor.
“As a Jew, this is something that speaks to me quite a bit. We call it ‘b’tzelem Elokim’ — ‘created in the image of God,’ literally,” said Russel Neiss, a Jewish educator and technologist and the parent of a trans child. “But the way we understand this is that God bestows a special honor onto humans that requires that we need to be treated with dignity and we need to treat others with dignity.”
Maharat Rori Picker Neiss, the executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of St. Louis, a rabbi, and the wife of Russel Neiss, also testified against the bills and in support of their child.
“Sitting here for the past two hours has been one of the most painful things that I’ve ever had to do as a mother and we’ve been doing this for four years,” she said. Picker-Neiss stayed home from the Jan. 31 Senate hearing for the first time in four years — but was back at the Capitol fighting for her child’s rights by the next day.
Next week, as another bill limiting what can be said about trans identity in schools makes its way through the Missouri chambers, Scharf-Anderson says school leadership will return to the state Capitol.
“We know that children imitate what we do, and we want to make sure that we’re being good role models for them,” she said. “And we will continue to stand by the children that we need to support who are part of our school and in our broader community.”
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The post Missouri Jewish leaders advocate for trans rights at state legislature appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Why Bad Bunny’s halftime show delighted New York Jews of a certain age
Since last month, a TikTok has been floating around, showing arthritic Latino grandmas and grandpas hearing Bad Bunny for the first time, courtesy their bemused grandchildren. On the reel, he samples “Un Verano en Nueva York,” a 50-year-old salsa song about New York City — or “Nueva Yol,” as Bad Bunny calls his update in his echt Puerto Rican accent. He sang “Nueva Yol” at the Super Bowl halftime show. The original dates from the 1970s, when the old folks were young and lithe and out on the town. On TikTok, when they listen to the new version, they perk up, and then they dance, as the kids look on, bemused and delighted.
I imagine that something similar happened to countless aging Jewish salsa music freaks like myself when they saw the halftime show. I’m 75 now, and I got up and danced, remembering those years during Jimmy Carter’s presidency when I donned high heels and tight skirts to dance away my Saturdays nights at venues like Casino 14 — catorce, it was pronounced — on 14th Street right by Union Square. I’d had a Jewish boyfriend whose mom, a Bell telephone operator, had danced mambo in the 1950s and taught her son the moves. He taught me the cha-cha and rhumba; other friends my age, many of them Jews, loved the music too and knew the steps and clubbed along with me. All this seemed no more remarkable to us than knowing how to say the prayer over the bread on Friday nights.
The Jewish love affair with Latin music began back in the 1950s and, since then, Jews have played it as musicians, produced it as record company owners, and DJed it in clubs and on the radio. Scholars have tried to explain the affinity, and why it has been such a comfortable fit for both ethnic groups. Some speculate that the music of both cultures tends to minor scales. Others point out that, as Jewish neighborhoods such as East Harlem were transitioning in the 1950s to Puerto Rican enclaves, the two groups lived side by side. (Working-class Jews even shared factory spaces with Puerto Rican laborers, especially in the garment industry.)
And there was the Borscht Belt. Starting in the 1950s, the big hotels typically maintained two house bands: one for mainstream pop, and the other for all Latin — the tummlers taught mambo lessons around the swimming pool. By the 1930s, Puerto Rico had been thoroughly colonized by the U.S. and was thoroughly poverty stricken. A vast exit began to the mainland: Puerto Ricans, after all, were American citizens. Many moved to the Bronx. By the 1960s, many of the kids had grown up to be musicians. Some had big bands and a big-band sound. They played regular gigs at places like Kutscher’s in the Catskills. You can still hear Tito Puente in 1959 playing “Grossinger’s Cha Cha Cha.”
Some of the musicians were Jews — for example, Larry Harlow, a classically trained pianist whose grandfather was a cantor and father a Latin music bandleader in the Catskills. Harlow’s actual family name was Kahn; his nickname among musicians and audiences was “El Judio Maravilloso,” the Marvelous Jew. His cousin Lewis Kahn was a salsa violinist and trombonist who’d studied at Julliard; he was “El Segundo Judio Maravilloso.” Once, I gave Lewis a lift back to his hotel post-concert, after I saw him shambling down the street alone. Painfully shy and bespectacled, he seemed more like a member of the Frankfurt School than someone in a band with matching suits and screaming brass.
My foreign language in high school had been Spanish. My conversational skills were good but still stilted. I didn’t get better — didn’t pick up the rhythms and slang and everyday spoken beauty of the language until the 1970s. I began listening then, over and over and over, to my growing collection of LPs from the salsa label Fania, copying the words and learning how they mashed together. Based in New York City, Fania even had a fan magazine. New York also had the annual Puerto Rican parade, and I vividly recall running into impromptu conga circles on street corners, where young people sang not just in Spanish but also in Lucumi, the deeply spiritual language of the Afro-Caribbean Yoruba and Santeria religions. They’d picked up the words from the same records I listened to. Their devotion to the musical aspects of their heritage reminded me of my fascination with cantorial music, which was also available on vintage LPs and even on low-watt radio in Brooklyn.
Twenty-five years ago I went to Columbia one summer to study Yiddish. In class I learned that Molly Picon had sung in Yiddish in the 1940s on the Forward-owned radio station WEVD. Her show was followed by one in Spanish with mambo bands like La Sonora Matancera. How many Jews kept listening after the Picon program signed off? Were Sholem Aleichem and Uriel Weinreich the salseros of their own culture? I got bat mitzvahed at age 71 at a shul in Brooklyn. I had kosher food at the after-party. And we danced to a mambo band, led by Benjamin Lapidus, a fellow synagogue member.
Bad Bunny’s “Nueva Yol” couldn’t be more New York. It talks about going to Bear Mountain in the summer. About the Yankees and the Mets. The 4th of July. About Willie Colon, the beloved salsa trumpeter from the Bronx who ran (unsuccessfully) for Congress in 1994 and for Public Advocate in 2001.
Bad Bunny’s halftime performance of “Nueva Yol” also celebrated a Brooklyn matriarch named Maria Antonia Cay, aka Toñita. She runs an intimate social club for Puerto Ricans in Williamsburg where she cooks traditional food, serves it, and tends bar at age 85. She made a cameo appearance at halftime, as Bad Bunny sang lyrics about conflict and anxiety, featuring his signature tic, the phrase “Uuy, uuy!” Go forward in the mouth just a bit and you’re at Yiddish “Oy oy!” At one point he jumped into a joyful mosh pit of dancers. They hoisted him up and paraded him around. It could have been the reception, in any borough, of any Jewish wedding.
There’s a lot of talk these days about Diaspora Jews versus Israel Jews. It’s a topic that’s been fraught for years and inspires endless discussion. There’s not so much talk about Diaspora Puerto Ricans: the people who settled and struggled here decades ago and whose lives became cultural cross-over when Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins and Leonard Bernstein — all Jews — created West Side Story. Today, the New York boroughs, with about a million Jews, constitute the biggest Jewish city in the world after Tel Aviv. And New York City has more Puerto Ricans than San Juan. Bad Bunny’s halftime show reminded us of our shared diaspora. It did so as our bodies grooved, even if they were geriatric bodies grooving slower than before.
The post Why Bad Bunny’s halftime show delighted New York Jews of a certain age appeared first on The Forward.
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Dutch Arrest 15 Suspected of Spreading Islamic State Propaganda on TikTok
Islamic State slogans painted along the walls of the tunnel was used by Islamic State militants as an underground training camp in the hillside overlooking Mosul, Iraq, March 4, 2017. Photo: via Reuters Connect.
Fifteen people were arrested in the Netherlands on Tuesday on suspicion of spreading propaganda for Islamic State on TikTok and trying to persuade people to commit terrorist attacks, Dutch prosecutors said.
The arrests were triggered by a TikTok account that spread large amounts of IS propaganda with Dutch subtitles, the prosecutors said.
The TikTok posts, some with more than 100,000 views, encouraged people to join Islamic State and glorified becoming a martyr for the violent Islamist group, they said.
Thirteen of the suspects are Syrian, and four have Dutch nationality, prosecutors said, implying that some were dual nationals. Four are minors.
The suspects, aged 16 to 53, were detained in raids across the Netherlands, following the arrest last month of a person who the prosecutors said was the main suspect.
TikTok is owned by China’s Bytedance.
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US Used Mobile Launchers for Missiles at Qatar Base as Iran Tensions Rose, Satellite Pictures Show
Satellite image shows F-15E, A-10 Thunderbolt, and C-130 Hercules at the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, in Al Azraq, Jordan, Feb. 2, 2026. Photo: 2026 PLANET LABS PBC/Handout via REUTERS
US forces in Qatar‘s al-Udeid, the biggest US base in the Middle East, put missiles into truck launchers as tensions with Iran ratcheted up since January, analysis of satellite images showed, meaning they could be moved more quickly.
The decision to keep the Patriot missiles in mobile trucks rather than semi-static launcher stations — meaning they could rapidly deploy to strike or be moved defensively in case of an Iranian attack — shows how risks heightened as frictions grew.
US President Donald Trump has threatened to bomb Iran over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, its backing for allied terrorist groups in the Middle East, and crushing of internal dissent, though talks to avert a war continue.
There are also US bases in Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Turkey, and on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
Iran‘s Revolutionary Guards have warned that in case of strikes on Iranian territory, they could retaliate against any US base.
A comparison of satellite photographs in early February with those taken in January shows a recent build-up of aircraft and other military equipment across the region, said William Goodhind, a forensic imagery analyst with Contested Ground.
At al-Udeid, the Patriot missiles were visible parked mounted into M983 Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Trucks (HEMTT) at the start of February, Goodhind said.
“The decision to do so gives the Patriots much greater mobility, meaning they can be moved to an alternative site or repositioned with greater speed,” he said.
It was not clear on Tuesday whether the missiles were still in the HEMTTs.
A spokesperson for the Pentagon was not immediately available for comment.
Iran says it has replenished its missile stocks after two weeks of conflict last summer when Israel bombed its nuclear facilities and some other military targets, a campaign that the United States joined late on.
Iran has underground missile complexes near Tehran, as well as at Kermanshah, Semnan and near the Gulf coast.
The Iranian naval drone carrier IRIS Shahid Bagheri was visible in satellite photographs on Jan. 27 at sea some 5 km from Bandar Abbas. It was also visible near Bandar Abbas on February 10.
Here are changes at US Middle East bases observed in satellite pictures:
AL-UDEID, QATAR:
Images from February 1 showed an RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft, three C-130 Hercules aircraft, 18 KC 135 Stratotankers, and seven C-17s. On Jan. 17 there had been 14 Stratotankers and two C-17s.
Up to 10 MIM-104 Patriot air defense systems were parked in HEMTTs.
MUWAFFAQ, JORDAN:
Images from Feb. 2 of one location in Muwaffaq showed 17 F15-E strike aircraft, 8 A-10 Thunderbolt aircraft, four C-130s, and four unidentified helicopters. Images from Jan. 16 were low resolution and it was not possible to identify all aircraft there.
Feb. 2 images of a second location in Muwaffaq showed a C-17 and a C-130, as well as four EA-18G Growler electronic warfare aircraft. Pictures of that location on Jan. 25 had not shown any aircraft.
OTHER BASES:
At Prince Sultan base in Saudi Arabia, images on Feb. 2 showed a C-5 Galaxy and a C-17 aircraft. Images on Dec. 6 showed five aircraft that appeared to be C-130s.
Satellite images from Feb. 6 showed seven more aircraft than had been observed on Jan. 31 at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
Images taken on Jan. 25 and Feb. 10 showed an increase in aircraft at Dukhan base in Oman.