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New York City Mayor Eric Adams praises yeshiva education, pushes back on criticism
(New York Jewish Week) — Eric Adams pledged support for yeshivas and said public schools should emulate them, pushing back on scrutiny the haredi Orthodox day schools have received for reportedly falling far short of state educational requirements, among other alleged malfeasance.
In a speech delivered last Wednesday at an event held by the Orthodox Union, the New York City mayor suggested that the city’s public schools were failing students and should follow the yeshivas’ example.
“But instead of us focusing on, how do we duplicate the success of improving our children, we attack the yeshivas that are providing a quality education that is embracing our children,” he said.
He added, “But we’re asking, ‘What are you doing in your schools?’ We need to ask, ‘What are we doing wrong in our schools?’ And learn what you are doing in the yeshivas to improve education.”
Beginning last September, the New York Times published a series of articles reporting that New York yeshivas did not meet state educational standards, and that some teachers employed corporal punishment. The Times also reported that some yeshivas had used public special education funding for other purposes.
Advocates for increased secular education in haredi schools have praised the series for drawing attention to a festering problem. But the Times’ investigative series has drawn criticism from Orthodox community leaders and others, who have portrayed it as a false and misleading attack on the haredi community.
Conservative think tanks have published analyses alleging that the series paints yeshivas with too broad a brush, and that the reporting relies on inaccurate data and unethical journalistic practices. Agudath Israel of America, a haredi umbrella group, launched a campaign claiming that the articles were fueling rising antisemitism in the city, and charged that the Times “conducted a smear campaign against Orthodox Jewish and Hasidic private schools — and their communities’ entire way of life — in a way that can increase the already alarming number of attacks.”
Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, echoed those complaints in a recent speech, saying the Times’ coverage has reflected ”the kind of antisemitism we know all too well.”
Adams’ speech last week appeared to give succor to critics of the investigative series, and comes as his administration is fighting a local press outlet’s effort to publicize city assessments of 26 yeshivas in New York City. The City, a local news website, went to court to force the city Department of Education to release their evaluations of teaching at these yeshivas, which have been compiled as part of a probe into the quality of instruction at the schools.
A judge ordered the education department to release the assessments, and the city says it will appeal that ruling, arguing that publicizing the assessments will interfere with an ongoing investigation.
In his speech, Adams also said he doesn’t “apologize for believing in God,” and added, “We are a country of faith and belief, and we should have it anywhere possible to educate and to help uplift our children in the process.” The remarks recalled comments he made in March, when he said, “Our challenge is not economics, our challenge is not finance, our challenge is faith — people have lost their faith.”
Adams has drawn support from Orthodox voters. In September, Rabbi David Niederman, executive director of the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg and North Brooklyn, a Satmar Hasidic organization, told the New York Jewish Week that the relationship between the Orthodox community and the Mayor is the “strongest it has ever been.”
“You were there for me when I ran for mayor,” Adams said in his speech last week. “I’m going to be there for you as your mayor.”
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The post New York City Mayor Eric Adams praises yeshiva education, pushes back on criticism appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Nearly half of young U.S. Jews want to replace Israel with binational state, poll find
Almost half of American Jews under 35 say the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be solved by creating a single country in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza with a government elected by both Israelis and Palestinians, according to a poll conducted by the Jewish Voter Resource Center.
The findings signal a generational shift in U.S. support for a binational state in Israel, reflecting a core demand of anti-Zionist protests on college campuses and beyond — even as most major Jewish organizations classify calls for a single state as an expression of antisemitism.
“The growing disaffection of younger Jewish Americans from Israel is a direct consequence of the policies of Bibi Netanyahu and the way the American Jewish establishment has demanded an ‘Israel right or wrong’ loyalty,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, the liberal advocacy group. “They’re reaping the harvest of seeds they planted — this is what you get.”
Ben-Ami pointed to the destruction of Israel’s war in Gaza, in which it killed an estimated 70,000 Palestinians and destroyed more than 80% of the enclave’s infrastructure, and growing violence by Jewish settlers in the West Bank, among other actions.
The data also adds to a growing debate over what share of Jews in the United States are Zionist, The Jewish Federations of North America began circulating data earlier this year that shows that around 90% of American Jews continue to support Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state, even as only 37% label themselves “Zionist.”
The Jewish Voter Resource Center poll, released on Thursday, challenges these findings. Twenty-four percent of Jewish adults polled support a one-state solution to the conflict, according to the survey, nearly double the 13% who said they preferred a binational state just two years ago. While age breakdowns were not available for the 2024 poll, an American Jewish Committee survey in 2022 found that 23% of American Jews ages 25 to 40 supported a binational state.
Half of non-Orthodox Jews under 35 — 51% — support a binational state, according to the new poll.
The Jewish Federations of North America declined to comment.
This abrupt turn comes amid a transformation in how Americans view Israel — favorability toward Israel has plummeted among almost every demographic group since 2022 — that has extended to Jews. A Washington Post poll found that 61% of Jewish adults said Israel had committed war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza, while 39% said it was guilty of genocide.
The shift in public opinion also drives a deeper wedge between Israeli and American Jews. While many Jews in the U.S. have been alarmed by Israel’s conduct in Gaza following the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack, Israeli Jews have expressed a sense of increased vulnerability, and some viewed the massacre as shutting down the possibility of Israel giving up control over the Palestinian territories or granting Palestinians equal rights.
A poll from Tel Aviv University last year found that only 15% of Israeli Jews supported a two-state solution, while 29% wanted to annex the West Bank and Gaza without offering citizenship to Palestinians living there. Only 1% of Israeli Jews supported “one binational state with civil rights.”
When asked in more detail about the possibility of a one-state solution, 3% of Israeli Jews said they would support it only if Palestinians were granted equal rights while 37% said they would support it if Palestinians were not given full rights.
Jeremy Pressman, who studies the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the University of Connecticut, said that young American Jews have little experience of Israel as a vulnerable underdog, unlike older generations that witnessed the establishment of the state or its victory in the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars.
Instead, they’ve largely come of age while Israel has been controlled by right-wing governments and have watched Israeli violence toward Palestinians on social media. “This creates a gap between the dominant Israeli Jewish understanding of the conflict and the center-left — or sometimes radical left — understanding of Jewish Americans,” Pressman said in an interview.
The Jewish Voter Resource Center, which is affiliated with the Jewish Democratic Council of America, polled 800 registered Jewish voters and the margin of error was +/- 3.5 percentage points and +/- 6.9 percentage points for Jews under 35.
Asher Kaplan Leba, a leader of the Massachusetts Synagogue Network on Israel/Palestine in Boston, said that many Jews had become disillusioned with a two-state solution as the Israeli government took steps that seemed to make it more difficult to implement, such as expanding West Bank settlements.
“It was my position for many years,” said Leba, 32. “But I don’t want to spend the rest of my adult life waiting for the authoritarian, ethno-nationalists in control of Israel — who I share no values with — to change.”
The post Nearly half of young U.S. Jews want to replace Israel with binational state, poll find appeared first on The Forward.
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Candidate who vowed to imprison ‘American Zionists’ loses in Texas runoff
(JTA) — Sheriff’s deputy Johnny Garcia won the Democratic nomination Tuesday in Texas’ 35th Congressional District, defeating opponent Maureen Galindo following a race shaped by scrutiny over Galindo’s antisemitic rhetoric.
The runoff in the San Antonio race drew national attention after Galindo, a local housing activist and therapist, came under scrutiny for comments that included vows to turn a local immigrant detention center “into a prison for American Zionists” and claims that it was her “perception that Zionist billionaires run the world.”
Following Galindo’s surprise first-place finish in the march primary, national Democratic leaders and Jewish organizations condemned her rhetoric and urged voters to reject her candidacy, including Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, who revealed to JTA earlier this month that he would not back or campaign with Galindo.
The district, which stretches between San Antonio and Austin, was heavily affected by Republican redistricting this year, one of several factors that local political observers and Democratic Party leaders said contributed to Galindo’s earlier win.
The race also attracted outside spending, with Lead Left PAC, a newly launched super PAC apparently tied to a Republican donation platform, pouring over $900,000 on ads and mailers promoting Galindo. Last week, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee launched a $35,000 ad buy against Galindo, an unusual step for the DCCC to take against a Democratic candidate.
“Republicans just spent weeks and almost a million dollars propping up an antisemite, and they should be ashamed and embarrassed — it was a disgrace,” the president of the Democratic Majority For Israel PAC, Brian Romick, told JTA in a statement. “Tonight is a victory for the voters of TX-35, for the Democratic Party, and for every Democrat who believes that antisemitism has no home in our coalition.”
Romick told JTA Tuesday night that he believed the results of the runoff signaled that Democratic primary voters “aren’t going to elect antisemitic candidates, and in the districts that we need to win, pro-Israel candidates are our best bet.”
Garcia will now face Republican nominee Carlos De La Cruz, who defeated opponent John Lujan, in the Nov. 3 general election.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Candidate who vowed to imprison ‘American Zionists’ loses in Texas runoff appeared first on The Forward.
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Ukraine reburies Nazi collaborator with state honors, drawing Israeli condemnation
(JTA) — Israel criticized Ukraine Monday after President Volodymyr Zelensky gave full state honors to a Ukrainian nationalist leader who was part of a movement that collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.
During a reburial ceremony on Sunday, Zelensky described Andriy Melnyk and his wife, Sofia Fedak-Melnyk, as “iconic Ukrainians of the 20th century who are deeply respected,” according to The New York Times.
Melnyk led one of the factions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists during its collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II. Though the Ukrainian organization shared a mutual opposition to Soviet rule with the Nazis, it also promoted antisemitic rhetoric and some of its members participated in the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust. Melnyk initially sought cooperation with Nazi Germany but was later detained by the Nazis as relations with Ukrainian nationalist groups deteriorated.
The ceremony marked the latest flashpoint in a longstanding dispute over Ukraine’s commemoration of World War II-era nationalist figures linked to Nazi collaboration. In 2018, the country designated the birthday of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera as a holiday, and in 2017, a statue was unveiled honoring a nationalist leader whose regime killed tens of thousands of Jews in pogroms during the Russian Revolution.
The remains of Melnyk and his wife were exhumed from Luxembourg last week and then transported to Ukraine for reburial at Kyiv’s National Military Memorial, which opened last year for soldiers killed in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Glory to every Ukrainian hero! Glory to all our Ukrainian warriors! Glory to our people!,” Zelensky, who is Jewish, wrote in a post on X marking the ceremony, adding that he was “grateful to everyone who has worked to make such returns of great Ukrainian figures possible and to give the Ukrainian People their own pantheon of heroes.”
The reburial was quickly decried by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, which wrote in a post on X that it was “deeply troubled by such national commemorations, which come at the expense of historical truth and the memory of Holocaust victims.”
“Honoring the leader of a movement that supported and collaborated with Nazi Germany during the persecution and murder of millions of Jews undermines the moral integrity essential to Holocaust remembrance,” the post read.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry wrote on X that there is “no place for ignoring historical truth and the memory of the victims murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.”
The post Ukraine reburies Nazi collaborator with state honors, drawing Israeli condemnation appeared first on The Forward.