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Oklahoma board to vote on application for religious Jewish charter school, teeing up potential battle
(JTA) — A Jewish education group seeking to create the nation’s first publicly funded religious Jewish charter school took its case to Oklahoma’s charter school board Monday, reviving a high-stakes constitutional battle over whether government money can be used to run faith-based public schools.
The National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation, founded by Peter Deutsch, a former Florida Democratic congressmember known for endorsing Donald Trump in 2024, has applied to open a statewide virtual Jewish charter school serving grades K-12 beginning in the 2026-27 school year.
The proposal would integrate Oklahoma academic standards with daily Jewish religious instruction, including Hebrew, Jewish texts, holidays and religious practice.
The Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board did not vote Monday but is expected to decide as early as next month whether the school can move forward.
Supporters say approval would give families a religious values-based option within the public school system. Critics argue it would violate the legal principle separating church and state and set a precedent that could reshape public education nationwide.
The proposal comes months after the U.S. Supreme Court deadlocked 4-4 in a case involving another Oklahoma religious charter school, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. That tie left in place an Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling that charter schools — which are publicly funded but privately run — are “state actors” and therefore must remain secular. (The deadlock resulted from a recusal by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who had ties to the Catholic charter school.)
Ben Gamla and its lawyers at Becket, a conservative religious-liberty firm, are seeking to reopen that fight.
“The opportunity is probably the best in Oklahoma of any state in the United States of America today,” Deutsch, who was wearing a kippah, told board members Monday. “And that’s really related to your statute and the implementation of that statute.”
Becket said in a statement after the meeting that Oklahoma is wrongly excluding religious schools from its charter program.
“Religious schools cannot be shut out of state programs just because they are religious,” said Eric Baxter, a senior counsel at Becket who represents Ben Gamla.
Deutsch, who founded a network of Hebrew-English charter schools in Florida nearly two decades ago, told the board that his schools have consistently ranked among the top public schools in that state. Those Florida schools, however, operate as strictly secular charters, teaching Hebrew language and Jewish culture without religious instruction.
The Oklahoma proposal is different.
Ben Gamla’s application describes the school as being organized “for educational, charitable, and religious purposes” and calls for daily Jewish religious studies alongside secular coursework.Teachers and staff would be expected to uphold Jewish religious standards in their professional conduct, with an additional expectation placed on those who are Jewish.
“Employees who are Jewish are expected to be faithful to the Jewish community and adhere to the teachings of the people and to the Torah in their lives,” the application submitted by Ben Gamla says.
Deutsch said that while Oklahoma has a relatively small Jewish population, many families — Jewish and non-Jewish — are seeking a values-based education.
“There are a lot of parents that are looking for a sort of a faith-based, rigorous academic program,” he told the board. “But there was nothing there.”
He said he had previously explored opening a physical Jewish charter school in Oklahoma but concluded that the numbers would not work. A virtual model, he said, would allow the school to operate with as few as 30 or 40 students and reach families across the state.
Board members asked Deutsch how the new Oklahoma nonprofit would relate to his Florida charter network. Deutsch said the two entities are legally separate but linked through him.
“They are separate corporations. They’re separate 501(c)(3)s,” he said. “The link is me.”
Deutsch, who his is one of the three directors currently serving on the board of Ben Gamla. The other two are Brett Farley, who was a member of St. Isidore’s board of directors, and Ezra Husney, a New York lawyer.
He also said a nonprofit backer has committed to cover any startup deficits and that he plans to seek federal charter-school startup grants.
He didn’t name the nonprofit, but Ben Gamla’s application includes a letter pledging financial support signed by Rabbi Raphael Butler, president of the Afikim Foundation, a New York based nonprofit aiming to “innovate and implement high impact global Jewish projects.” Butler is also president of Olami, a global Orthodox Jewish outreach group.
In a press release issued after the meeting, Becket framed the case as one of religious discrimination, saying the state is required under the U.S. Constitution to treat religious and secular schools equally in public programs.
Last year’s Supreme Court deadlock in the Catholic case left the constitutional question unresolved. Conservative justices have signaled sympathy for the idea that states may not exclude religious organizations from generally available public benefits — a line of reasoning Becket hopes to extend to charter schools.
“Our goal is to win here at the board, and if that doesn’t happen, we will bring a case in federal court,” Baxter told local media after the meeting.
Church-state separation advocates say the plan would cross a clear constitutional line.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which led the legal fight against the Catholic school, has already filed public-records requests seeking communications between Ben Gamla and the charter board and has signaled it is prepared to sue.
“Despite their loss earlier this year in the U.S. Supreme Court, religious extremists once again are trying to undermine our country’s promise of church-state separation by forcing Oklahoma taxpayers to fund a religious public school. Not on our watch,” Rachel Laser, the group’s president, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in November.
In Oklahoma, home to fewer than 9,000 Jews, the proposal has drawn skepticism from local Jewish leaders, some of whom say they learned about it from reporters rather than organizers. Rabbi Daniel Kaiman of Congregation B’nai Emunah in Tulsa told JTA last month that no one in the community had been consulted. “I was surprised to be learning about it through a reporter,” he said.
Kaiman said he worries about a national legal fight being waged through a tiny Jewish community with delicate interfaith and political relationships. Oklahoma already has Jewish day schools and synagogue programs, he added. “I don’t know who this new proposal is for,” he said.
The post Oklahoma board to vote on application for religious Jewish charter school, teeing up potential battle appeared first on The Forward.
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Vanderbilt launches inquiry into instructor after math question about Israeli occupation draws criticism
(JTA) — Vanderbilt University has launched an inquiry into a mathematics lecturer whose classroom exercise about Palestinian territory drew criticism from the activist group StopAntisemitism.
Tekin Karadağ, a senior lecturer at the university’s department of mathematics, drew the ire of the antisemitism watchdog after it obtained a slide from one of his lectures that used a pro-Palestinian protest slogan and suggested that Israel was shrinking the Palestinian territory.
“Assume Palestine as a state with a rectangular land shape. There is the Mediterranean Sea on the west and the Jordan River on the east,” read the slide. “From the river to the sea, Palestine (…) was approximately 100 km. in 1946. The land decreases by 250 sq. km per year, due to the occupation by Israel. How fast is the width of the land decreasing now?”
Karadǎg, a Turkish national who received his PhD from Texas A&M University in 2021, included the question under “examples related to the popular issues” in a survey of calculus class, according to StopAntisemitism, which wrote in a post on X that Karadǎg was “bringing his anti-Israel, antisemitic bias into his classroom.”
In a statement shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Vanderbilt said that the content had been removed and that an inquiry had been launched into Karadağ.
“The university has received reports alleging a member of the faculty engaged in unprofessional conduct related to content shared during course instruction,” the school said. “The content in question has been removed, and a formal inquiry has been initiated consistent with relevant university policy.”
In recent years, rhetoric about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on college campuses has grown increasingly fraught, with professors’ commentary on the region sparking heavy scrutiny and, at times, disciplinary measures when their universities have determined that they exceeded the bounds of academic freedom. A recent report by Columbia University’s antisemitism task force found that students frequently experienced pro-Palestinian advocacy in classes entirely unrelated to the Middle East — such as dance or math classes.
The inquiry was not the first time that Vanderbilt took swift action against the expression of pro-Palestinian sentiments on its campus.
In March 2024, the university, which has roughly 1,100 Jewish undergraduate students, was among the first universities to expel students who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. This year, the school’s antisemitism “grade” from the Anti-Defamation League was bumped up from a “C” to an “A.”
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Hugh Laurie rejects ‘Zionist’ label after his tribute to Israeli ‘Tehran’ producer sparks social media firestorm
(JTA) — British actor Hugh Laurie pushed back against being labeled as a “Zionist” after facing a wave of online criticism for posting a tribute to the Israeli producer of the hit television show “Tehran.”
“Dana Eden, who co-created and produced ‘Tehran’, died on Sunday, seemingly by her own hand,” Laurie, who played a nuclear inspector in the show’s third season, tweeted last week. “It’s a terrible thing. She was brilliant, and funny, and an exceptional leader. Love and condolences to all who knew her.”
The seemingly innocuous post eulogizing Eden, 52, who was found dead while filming the latest season of the hit Apple TV+ series in Athens last week, quickly drew a volley of backlash on social media.
“She was part of the occupation force’s propaganda arm,” wrote one user in response to Laurie’s post. “What a shame, didn’t expect you to be a closet Zionist.” Another wrote that Eden “creates propaganda for Israel so that they can kill kids more effectively. People should have no sympathy for her.”
The award-winning series, which follows a young Israeli Mossad agent in Iran, was produced by the Israeli public broadcaster Kan and purchased by Apple TV+ in 2020 for roughly $20 million. Eden’s death, for which no cause has been announced, occurred during production of the show’s fourth season, which had already stalled following Oct. 7.
Laurie is not the first actor to spurn the “Zionist” label, as entertainers in recent years have increasingly faced pressure to declare their views on Israel. In December, Jewish actress Odessa A’zion pushed back on claims she was a Zionist after an image of her wearing an IDF shirt as a teenager circulated online.
On Friday, Laurie, who previously starred in the Emmy Award-winning medical drama “House,” shot back at the criticism.
“Nothing I have ever said or done could lead a sane person to believe that I am a Zionist,” wrote Laurie in a post on X. “However. If someone exults in the death of a friend of mine, yes I will block them. If you wouldn’t do the same in my position, you can f—ck off too.”
Laurie’s subsequent post also drew outcry, but this time from pro-Israel influencers who lamented the actor’s disavowal of the Zionist label, calling him “weak” and a “pathetic weasel” in the replies.
Freelance journalist Angela Epstein replied to Laurie’s post, writing, “Not Hugh Laurie as well. I thought he was one of the decent ones….”
“God almighty, why does no one understand English any more?” wrote Laurie in response to Epstein’s critique. “I have not spoken or written a word that would indicate pro or anti Zionism. That’s what those words mean. Blimey.”
The post Hugh Laurie rejects ‘Zionist’ label after his tribute to Israeli ‘Tehran’ producer sparks social media firestorm appeared first on The Forward.
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German anti-Zionist group’s plan to protest at Buchenwald memorial over kaffiyeh ban sparks outrage
(JTA) — An anti-Zionist group in Germany has drawn condemnation after it announced plans for a protest against the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial in response to a ban on pro-Palestinian symbols at the site.
The group Kufiyas in Buchenwald claims that the memorial has become a place of “historical revisionism and genocide denial.” It announced a demonstration for April 11, the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp.
“Instead of honoring the persecuted and resolutely opposing every genocide, the memorial spreads Israeli propaganda and provides the ideological ammunition for the ongoing genocide in Palestine,” the group says on its website.
Buchenwald, one of the first concentration camps built by the Nazis and one of the largest in the country, was the site of the murder of roughly 56,000 male prisoners, including 11,000 Jews, from 1937 to 1945.
Last year, a German court ruled that the concentration camp had a right to refuse entry to visitors who wear a keffiyeh, a traditional Palestinian headscarf that has been adopted by pro-Palestinian protesters. The ruling stemmed from a lawsuit by a woman who attempted to wear the scarf to an event commemorating the concentration camp’s liberation.
The woman, who was only identified by her first name, Anna, posted a testimony about her actions on the Kufiyas in Buchenwald Instagram page in which she said she was inspired by the resistance of Buchenwald prisoners.
“Our fundamental principle is this: criticism of the Israeli government’s policies, settlement policy, or actions in the Gaza Strip is legitimate,” said the Buchenwald Foundation’s director Jens-Christian Wagner in a statement outlining the memorial’s protocols. “However, it becomes antisemitic when used to relativize the Holocaust and discredit its victims as perpetrators. We will not tolerate this at the Buchenwald Memorial.”
The campaign against the memorial has been signed onto by a host of pro-Palestinian groups, including the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network and the German group Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East, which has defended the protest on X as evidence of what “commemorating past German crimes has to do with rejecting current ones.”
In a post on Instagram announcing the protest earlier this month, the Kufiyas in Buchenwald group wrote that it would hold a “public protest” in Weimar, the German city located nearby the concentration camp. The group also said it planned to host lectures and a “tour that vividly illustrates the events in the former concentration camp.”
It was unclear whether the protest is intended to take place outside the memorial itself. Kufiyas in Buchenwald did not immediately respond to an inquiry from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about the location of the protest.
The protest quickly drew condemnation from German leaders, including the country’s antisemitism czar Felix Klein, who told the Swiss outlet Neue Zürcher Zeitung that the protest marked a “new low point in the unfortunately all-too-common reversal of perpetrator and victim roles.”
Michael Panse, the commissioner for combatting antisemitism for the German state Thuringia, where Weimar is located, told the outlet that the protest was “tasteless and historically ignorant.”
The protests also drew condemnation from the European Jewish Congress, which wrote in a post on X that the demonstration represents a “deeply troubling instrumentalization of Holocaust remembrance.”
“Holocaust memorial sites are places of solemn reflection and respect for the victims of National Socialism,” the post continued. “They must never be exploited to promote agendas that deny Israel’s legitimacy or glorify those who perpetrate violence against Jews.”
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