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‘No Kings’ protests fall on Shabbat. So these Jews organized one in walking distance.
A few hundred people are expected to assemble Saturday at an intersection in West Los Angeles to protest the administration of President Donald Trump. But in doing so they will also be challenging a power structure closer to home: the right-wing consensus that dominates political life in their Orthodox Jewish neighborhood.
Ronni Hendel, an executive coach and consultant, co-organized a No Kings protest in Pico-Robertson, one of the largest Orthodox communities in the country, to enable Shabbat-observant Jews like her — who don’t drive or ride public transportation on the Jewish day of rest — to participate in the demonstrations.
But Hendel said the Pico-Robertson protest, one of some 3,500 “No Kings” demonstrations being held across the country this weekend, will also show that American Orthodox Judaism, a denomination long associated with conservative politics, contains a substantive liberal minority crying out to be heard.
“There’s this sense that the frum (Orthodox) community is pro-Trump,” Hendel said. “I think it’s important for those who aren’t to have a place to say that as an observant Jew, I can put forth an opinion that isn’t necessarily the dominant view.”
Saturday’s protest will be the fourth Hendel has organized during the second Trump administration at the corner of Pico and La Cienega boulevards, about a half-mile from the intersection that gives the neighborhood its name. The voting district covering that intersection swung deep red in the 2024 election, as did heavily Orthodox neighborhoods across the country. Polls showed three-quarters of Orthodox Jews intended to vote for Trump.
Hendel said the seed for a Pico-Robertson protest dated back to January 2017, in the days leading up to the inaugural Women’s March that convened throngs of demonstrators in the first major national protest against the new president.
The Los Angeles protest that day fell on a Saturday and was being held downtown — 10 miles away from Pico-Robertson. Unable to drive and not wanting to miss the event, Hendel and a few likeminded friends booked a hotel. When it came to the “Hands Off!” protest in April 2025 — also a Saturday — they wanted to be able to include more people.
So Hendel planned the Pico-Robertson “Hands Off!” protest for a late afternoon so as not to overlap with morning synagogue services — and picked an intersection that wasn’t quite in the heart of the neighborhood.
“We want to have a voice, but we’re not trying to be in-your-face,” Hendel said.
Hendel and co-organizer Rabbi Aryeh Cohen are part of a broader movement of liberal Orthodox Jews uniting across their communities to make their voices heard. Groups like Smol Emuni and Halachic Left, for example, primarily address Jewish conversation around Israel. The No Kings protests, on the other hand, focus more on domestic issues — particularly concerns about executive overreach.
Jewish people are not the only protesters in attendance at the Pico-Roberston rally, and signs brought to previous events offered a mix of secular and Jewish messages. (One referencing the Messiah read, “Only mashiach is king.”) But the organizers, marshals and medics at the protest are all Shabbat-observant Jews, Hendel said.
“It has a little bit of a block party feel,” Hendel said, “like we are all supporting each other and showing that this community, this neighborhood also has this.”
Saturday’s event will be the first since the U.S. and Israel went to war with Iran, something Hendel is monitoring. Pre-war protests have drawn ire from community leaders, including one neighborhood Jewish security agency that warned of a “pro-Hamas protest.” This time around, Hendel is wary of conflict with her Pico-Robertson neighbors, who she says widely support the war.
While she maintained the war is illegal because Trump did not receive Congressional approval for it, she didn’t plan to make her sign about it.
“I’m really worried about what this does to relationships between Israeli Jews and American Jews, and within the American Jewish community — it terrifies me,” Hendel said.
But, she added, “that’s not my biggest issue right now with Trump. I’d say it’s more the internal stuff with immigration and ICE and health. And there’s a million other issues that I can bring signs about.”
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JD Vance refuses to disavow Tucker Carlson
(JTA) — Vice President JD Vance acknowledged that he has “political disagreements” with Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News personality who has spread antisemitic conspiracy theories and sparked a rift within the Republican Party.
But that won’t impact their friendship, Vance said during a press conference on Thursday at the White House.
“Everybody knows that Tucker Carlson and I are friends, and I think it’s very obvious that Tucker has said some things that I disagree with,” Vance said.
He pointed to Carlson’s criticisms of Vance’s boss, President Donald Trump, as well as Carlson’s suggestion that he would rather Democratic progressive Abdul El-Sayed win Michigan’s U.S. Senate seat than Republican Mike Rogers, as examples of where they disagree.
“Tucker is a friend despite the fact that we disagree on a number of things. And I’m not going to play the game where I throw friends under the bus because I have political disagreements with them,” Vance said.
Vance’s refusal to disavow Carlson comes days after he appeared in a closed-doors session in Las Vegas before hundreds of Republican Jewish Coalition members, some of whom have indicated that they would prefer Secretary of State Marco Rubio to Vance as Trump’s successor in 2028.
His RJC appearance started and ended with standing ovations for the vice president, and he spoke about the importance of the U.S.-Israel relationship and denounced antisemitism during the 35-minute conversation. He angered a number of attendees and Jewish conservatives, however, when he sidestepped a question about Carlson and other controversial right-wing podcasters.
On Thursday, a reporter asked Vance about “those who are uneasy” with his close relationship to Carlson and believe that he is avoiding addressing questions about it.
“I’m not avoiding anything,” Vance countered.
After declining to distance himself from Carlson, Vance said that his refusal to do so should be a model for how other Americans engage in discourse across lines of disagreement.
“If you have a disagreement with someone politically — even over a deeply held issue — you should still be friends with that person, because the whole republic depends on people of different perspectives being able to talk to one another,” Vance said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Jerusalem cafe bows to Haredi protests, will no longer open on Shabbat
(JTA) — Cafe Basimta, the Jerusalem coffee shop that became a flashpoint in the city’s long-running dispute over Shabbat observance, will stop opening on Saturdays beginning this weekend after two months of weekly ultra-Orthodox protests.
The cafe said Thursday that the decision was made “after prolonged deliberation and with a heavy heart,” out of a desire to lower tensions and restore calm.
Eli Birnbaum, CEO of the messianic group Jews for Jesus, which runs the cafe, called the move a “difficult and painful decision” in the statement, saying it stemmed from a responsibility to its customers, its faith and Israeli society.
“Over the past few months, the cafe has become a focal point of friction and danger, a reality that contradicts our identity as Jews who believe in Jesus and our belief in loving others, respect and bringing people closer together, even with those who oppose us,” Birnbaum said.
He thanked Israel Police, the Jerusalem municipality and those who had come to support the cafe during the protests. “We now want to return Cafe Basimta to what it was intended to be: a calm, pleasant and open place for coffee, culture and dialogue.”
The decision marks a reversal for Cafe Basimta and its operator, Yoel Ben David, who said after the first protest on July 4 that the business would continue opening on weekends despite pressure from demonstrators. By late July, Ben David told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the protests had actually helped business financially, but added: “Me and the staff, we don’t love it. We’d all love it to just chill out.”
Basimta opened earlier this summer in Jerusalem’s central Nahlaot neighborhood, near the Mahane Yehuda market. It later emerged that the cafe was operated by Jews for Jesus, a missionary organization whose members identify as Jews who believe Jesus is the Messiah.
The demonstrations began July 4 and continued for nine consecutive Saturdays through Aug. 29. At the first protest, dozens of ultra-Orthodox demonstrators, many of them minors, surrounded the cafe, banged on its windows and overturned tables, according to staff and video from the scene.
Later protests saw demonstrators break through police barricades and try to approach the cafe, while a bag containing feces was thrown at its entrance on another weekend. In August, a woman was accused of putting glue in the front-door lock, delaying the cafe’s opening.
Supporters meanwhile began turning up each Saturday to patronize the cafe, at times forming long lines outside, while police deployed officers and barricades to separate the two sides. Politicians including Yisrael Beytenu Chairman and former Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman and Democrats Chairman Yair Golan, a former IDF deputy chief of staff, also visited or backed supporters of the cafe.
Golan denounced Thursday’s decision as the result of “haredi terror,” saying weeks of violence, demonstrations and threats had ultimately forced the cafe to give in. Liberman said the closure showed growing religious coercion, writing on X that in “Israel 2026,” drinking coffee on Shabbat was forbidden while “hating, attacking and rioting on Shabbat was permitted.”
Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Adir Schwartz, who heads the pluralist Hitorerut municipal faction, also criticized the closure. Hitorerut said it was examining ways to operate a cafe on Saturdays in response to Basimta’s closure.
A spokesperson for Jews for Jesus told JTA that any such initiative was unrelated to Basimta or the organization.
Basimta’s ties to Jews for Jesus have also prompted a separate campaign against the cafe by anti-missionary activists. Rabbi Binyamin Vulcan, who heads the counter-missionary activities of Or LeAchim, told JTA in July that the organization was planning a weekday demonstration focused specifically on the cafe’s connection to Jews for Jesus and was seeking to have it closed through municipal channels.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Spain’s Jewish federation reports over 200 antisemitic incidents in 2025
(JTA) —
MADRID — Spain’s Jewish umbrella organization and a watchdog group have reported that antisemitic incidents rose 14.5% in 2025, warning that hatred was being “normalized.”
The Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain (FCJE) recorded 221 antisemitic incidents in Spain last year, up from 193 in 2024, in a report released Wednesday together with the Movement Against Intolerance (MCI), a Spanish human rights group. Spain is home to an estimated 40,000 to 70,000 Jews.
The trend matches an increase in hate incidents documented by the Spanish government. Spain’s Interior Ministry said in June that Jews were targeted in 69 hate crimes and incidents in 2025, jumping from 37 in 2024. Data from the Interior Ministry reflects crimes that are formally reported or detected by police, while the FCJE monitors incidents collected from community members, social media and other sources.
The new report came from the Observatory of Antisemitism, a joint initiative by the FCJE and the MCI to track antisemitism since Hamas’s attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s ensuing assault in Gaza. The initiative has followed incidents such as the vandalism of Holocaust memorials with swastikas, the desecration of Jewish graves and the individual targeting of Jews, including a group of French tourists who were harassed and spat on in July while leaving a synagogue in Barcelona.
“Since October 7, 2023, Spanish Jews have had to go to our gathering places with special security measures,” FCJE president David Obadía said in a statement. “Our children are the only ones who go to school with a police presence, and insults and discrimination are part of our reality practically every day.”
María Royo, a spokesperson for the FCJE, blamed “campaigns against Israel” for the rise in antisemitic incidents. She told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that some groups, saying Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, also “blame all Jews.”
“The security forces are doing everything within their power, but the government, politicians, media and opinion leaders could be much more rigorous and careful to prevent this situation,” said Royo.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is among Europe’s most vocal critics of Israel, which he says has committed genocide. The Israeli government has repeatedly said the Spanish government is antisemitic, an accusation that Spain strongly rejects.
Esteban Ibarra, the president of the MCI, said in a statement that antisemitism should be distinguished from debates about Israel.
“Antisemitism is not an opinion or a political disagreement: it is a form of hatred and discrimination against Jews,” said Ibarra. “When it is tolerated, normalized or minimized, coexistence deteriorates and democracy is weakened.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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