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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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Frank Gehry, renowned architect who began life as Frank Goldberg, dies at 96
(JTA) — Frank Gehry, a Jewish architect who became one of the world’s most renowned innovators in his field for his contributions to modernist architecture, including the famed Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, has died at 96.
His death following a brief respiratory illness was confirmed on Friday by the chief of staff at his firm, Meaghan Lloyd, according to the New York Times.
Gehry was born Ephraim Owen Goldberg on Feb. 28, 1929, to a Jewish family in Toronto. In 1947, Gehry moved to Los Angeles with his family and later went on to graduate from the University of Southern California’s School of Architecture in 1954.
The same year, he changed his name to Gehry at the behest of his first wife who was “worried about antisemitism and thought it sounded less Jewish.” He would later say he would not make the choice again.
Among Gehry’s most acclaimed works, which feature his signature, sculptural style, are the Bilbao Guggenheim, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris and the DZ Bank Building in Berlin.
Gehry also often returned to the motif of a fish, including two large fish sculptures in the World Trade Center in New York City and on Barcelona’s seafront. Some tied the fish motif to his recollections about his Jewish grandmother’s trips to the fishmonger to prepare for Shabbat each week.
“We’d put it in the bathtub,” Gehry said, according to the New York Times. “And I’d play with this fish for a day until she killed it and made gefilte fish.”
Gehry began to identify as an atheist shortly after his bar mitzvah. But in 2018, while he was working on ANU-Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv, he told the Jewish Journal that Judaism had influenced his career nonetheless.
“There’s a curiosity built into the [Jewish] culture,” he said. “I grew up under that. My grandfather read Talmud to me. That’s one of the Jewish things I hang on to probably — that philosophy from that religion. Which is separate from God. It’s more ephemeral. I was brought up with that curiosity. I call it a healthy curiosity. Maybe it is something that the religion has produced. I don’t know. It’s certainly a positive thing.”
In 1989, Gehry won the prestigious Pritzker Prize, considered one of the top awards in the field of architecture, and in 1999 won the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects. In 2007, Gehry also received the Jerusalem Prize for Arts and Letters and in 2016 won the Presidential Medal of Freedom from then-president Barack Obama.
His survivors include his wife, Berta Isabel Aguilera, daughter Brina, and sons Alejandro and Samuel. Another daughter, Leslie Gehry Brenner, died of cancer in 2008.
The post Frank Gehry, renowned architect who began life as Frank Goldberg, dies at 96 appeared first on The Forward.
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Herzog Says Wellbeing of Israelis His Only Concern in Deal With Netanyahu’s ‘Extraordinary’ Pardon Request
Israeli President Isaac Herzog speaks during a press conference with Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics in Riga, Latvia, Aug. 5, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ints Kalnins
i24 News – In an interview with Politico published on Saturday, Israeli President Isaac Herzog remained tight-lipped on whether he intended to grant Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “extraordinary” pardon request, saying that his decision will be motivated by what’s best for Israel.
“There is a process which goes through the Justice Ministry and my legal adviser and so on. This is certainly an extraordinary request and above all when dealing with it I will consider what is the best interest of the Israeli people,” Herzog said. “The well-being of the Israeli people is my first, second and third priority.”
Asked specifically about President Donald Trump’s request, Herzog said “I respect President Trump’s friendship and his opinion,” adding, “Israel, naturally, is a sovereign country.”
Herzog addressed a wide range of topics in the interview, including the US-Israel ties and the shifts in public opinion on Israel.
“One has to remember that the fountains of America, of American life, are based on biblical values, just like ours. And therefore, I believe that the underlying fountain that we all drink from is the same,” he said. “However, I am following very closely the trends that I see in the American public eye and the attitude, especially of young people, on Israel.”
“It comes from TikTok,” he said of the torrent of hostility toward Israel that has engulf swathes of U.S. opinion since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, “from a very shallow discourse of the current situation, pictures or viewpoints, and doesn’t judge from the big picture, which is, is Israel a strategic ally? Yes. Is Israel contributing to American national interests, security interests? Absolutely yes. Is Israel a beacon of democracy in the Middle East? Absolutely yes.”
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Syria’s Sharaa Charges Israel ‘Exports Its Crises to Other Countries’
FILE PHOTO: Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa addresses the 80th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at the U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., September 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton/File Photo
i24 News – Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa on Saturday escalated his messaging against Israel at the Doha forum.
“Israel is working to export its own crises to other countries and escape accountability for the massacres it committed in the Gaza Strip, justifying everything with security concerns,” he said.
“Meanwhile, Syria, since its liberation, has sent positive messages aimed at establishing the foundations of regional stability.
“Israel has responded to Syria with extreme violence, launching over 1,000 airstrikes and carrying out 400 incursions into its territory. The latest of these attacks was the massacre it perpetrated in the town of Beit Jinn in the Damascus countryside, which claimed dozens of lives.
“We are working with influential countries worldwide to pressure Israel to withdraw from the territories it occupied after December 8, 2014, and all countries support this demand.
“Syria insists on Israel’s adherence to the 1974 Disengagement Agreement. The demand for a demilitarized zone raises many questions. Who will protect this zone if there is no Syrian army presence?
“Any agreement must guarantee Syria’s interests, as it is Syria that is subjected to Israeli attacks. So, who should be demanding a buffer zone and withdrawal?”