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Sharon Kleinbaum, rabbi of influential LGBTQ+ synagogue Beit Simchat Torah, is stepping down
(New York Jewish Week) — Sharon Kleinbaum, the first full-time rabbi of Manhattan’s Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, announced that she is stepping down after three decades leading New York’s influential LGBTQ+ synagogue.
In an announcement to congregants, Kleinbaum, 63, said that “this is the right time to make room for a new senior rabbi for CBST.”
“CBST is in a strong place for the next chapter, and I am confident in our future,” she wrote. “CBST is a place of deep spirituality and a center of activism rooted in Jewish values, texts and justice. It will be spiritually meaningful for CBST to discover who it is without me as the senior rabbi and for me to discover who I am apart from CBST.”
Kleinbaum, who plans to leave her post next summer, wrote that her official departure is “many months” away.
A New Jersey native, Kleinbaum was ordained at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and came to the unaffiliated CBST in 1992. The synagogue, incorporated in 1973, had been meeting in Greenwich Village, and decided to hire a full-time rabbi at what was the height of the AIDS crisis and when the need for pastoral care was urgent. Soon after, more than 2,000 people attended CBST’s Yom Kippur services at the Jacob Javits Convention Center, at the time the largest-ever gathering of lesbian and gay Jews. That number has since grown to over 3,000 people annually.
In 2016, CBST moved into a new home on the ground floor of 130 West 30th Street, an 18-story building between 6th and 7th Avenues.
During her tenure, Kleinbaum has steered the synagogue’s activism in LGBTQ+ issues and beyond. In 1995, she and other activists successfully pushed for a resolution seeking support for civil marriage for gay couples that was approved by the Reform movement’s Central Conference of American Rabbis in 1996. She regularly weighs in on municipal issues, including immigration, paid sick leave for workers and policing policies.
At the same time, CBST expanded its children’s programming, with a Hebrew school, children’s services and educational programming.
Kleinbaum is a supporter of the liberal pro-Israel lobby J Street; in 2020 a right-wing political action denounced her in an ad calling her an “antisemite,” drawing condemnation from the Anti-Defamation League and others.
Kleinbaum, who regularly makes lists of the country’s top rabbis and religious leaders, was also a co-founder, in 2020, of New York Jewish Agenda, a progressive advocacy group.
NYJA “arose from a sense that there is a Jewish voice that exists widely throughout New York, but that is uncoordinated,” she said at the time. “The mainstream liberal Jewish voice is not getting out into the public square in the way that it should.”
In 2021, she was named by President Joe Biden to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
In 2018 she married Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. The rabbi and the union leader appear to enjoy their role as a progressive power couple: After former Trump administration official Mike Pompeo called Weingarten “the most dangerous person in the world” in November, Kleinbaum was photographed in a T-shirt reading, “I am proud to be married to the most dangerous person in the world.”
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The post Sharon Kleinbaum, rabbi of influential LGBTQ+ synagogue Beit Simchat Torah, is stepping down appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Tucker’s Ideas About Jews Come from Darkest Corners of the Internet, Says Huckabee After Combative Interview
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee looks on during the day he visits the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, in Jerusalem’s Old City, April 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – In a combative interview with US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, right-wing firebrand Tucker Carlson made a host of contentious and often demonstrably false claims that quickly went viral online. Huckabee, who repeatedly challenged the former Fox News star during the interview, subsequently made a long post on X, identifying a pattern of bad-faith arguments, distortions and conspiracies in Carlson’s rhetorical style.
Huckabee pointed out his words were not accorded by Carlson the same degree of attention and curiosity the anchor evinced toward such unsavory characters as “the little Nazi sympathizer Nick Fuentes or the guy who thought Hitler was the good guy and Churchill the bad guy.”
“What I wasn’t anticipating was a lengthy series of questions where he seemed to be insinuating that the Jews of today aren’t really same people as the Jews of the Bible,” Huckabee wrote, adding that Tucker’s obsession with conspiracies regarding the provenance of Ashkenazi Jews obscured the fact that most Israeli Jews were refugees from the Arab and Muslim world.
The idea that Ashkenazi Jews are an Asiatic tribe who invented a false ancestry “gained traction in the 80’s and 90’s with David Duke and other Klansmen and neo-Nazis,” Huckabee wrote. “It has really caught fire in recent years on the Internet and social media, mostly from some of the most overt antisemites and Jew haters you can find.”
Carlson branded Israel “probably the most violent country on earth” and cited the false claim that Israel President Isaac Herzog had visited the infamous island of the late, disgraced sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“The current president of Israel, whom I know you know, apparently was at ‘pedo island.’ That’s what it says,” Carlson said, citing a debunked claim made by The Times reporter Gabrielle Weiniger. “Still-living, high-level Israeli officials are directly implicated in Epstein’s life, if not his crimes, so I think you’d be following this.”
Another misleading claim made by Carlson was that there were more Christians in Qatar than in Israel.
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Pezeshkian Says Iran Will Not Bow to Pressure Amid US Nuclear Talks
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian attends the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit 2025, in Tianjin, China, September 1, 2025. Iran’s Presidential website/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Saturday that his country would not bow its head to pressure from world powers amid nuclear talks with the United States.
“World powers are lining up to force us to bow our heads… but we will not bow our heads despite all the problems that they are creating for us,” Pezeshkian said in a speech carried live by state TV.
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Italy’s RAI Apologizes after Latest Gaffe Targets Israeli Bobsleigh Team
Milano Cortina 2026 Olympics – Bobsleigh – 4-man Heat 1 – Cortina Sliding Centre, Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy – February 21, 2026. Adam Edelman of Israel, Menachem Chen of Israel, Uri Zisman of Israel, Omer Katz of Israel in action during Heat 1. Photo: REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha
Italy’s state broadcaster RAI was forced to apologize to the Jewish community on Saturday after an off‑air remark advising its producers to “avoid” the Israeli crew was broadcast before coverage of the Four-Man bobsleigh event at the Winter Olympics.
The head of RAI’s sports division had already resigned earlier in the week after his error-ridden commentary at the Milano Cortina 2026 opening ceremony two weeks ago triggered a revolt among its journalists.
On Saturday, viewers heard “Let’s avoid crew number 21, which is the Israeli one” and then “no, because …” before the sound was cut off.
RAI CEO Giampaolo Rossi said the incident represented a “serious” breach of the principles of impartiality, respect and inclusion that should guide the public broadcaster.
He added that RAI had opened an internal inquiry to swiftly determine any responsibility and any potential disciplinary procedures.
In a separate statement RAI’s board of directors condemned the remark as “unacceptable.”
The board apologized to the Jewish community, the athletes involved and all viewers who felt offended.
RAI is the country’s largest media organization and operates national television, radio and digital news services.
The union representing RAI journalists, Usigrai, had said Paolo Petrecca’s opening ceremony commentary had dealt “a serious blow” to the company’s credibility.
His missteps included misidentifying venues and public figures, and making comments about national teams that were widely criticized.