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She was elected the first Jewish president of the Catholic Biblical Association. Then came the hate.

When Amy-Jill Levine was elected president of the Catholic Biblical Association earlier this month, she faced vicious backlash.

Those who opposed her election couldn’t exactly point to a lack of qualifications. Levine has written dozens of books on the New Testament, taught a New Testament course at the prestigious Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, served on the editorial board of Catholic Biblical Quarterly and spoken privately with Pope Francis three times.

Instead, her critics fixated on one trait they apparently consider disqualifying: She’s Jewish.

“Your Zionist ass doesn’t belong in our religion. Keep yourself to the Talmud and keep eating babies. STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM CHRISTIANITY,” someone wrote in an email to Levine, which she shared with the Forward.

Levine’s Facebook page was bombarded with so much hate that she asked her daughter to moderate the comments. Online critics called Levine “anti-Christian,” denounced her as “Zionist,” and attacked her efforts to push back against antisemitic interpretations of the Bible.

On its face, a Jew at the helm of a professional association devoted to the study of Christian scripture might seem odd. After all, the Catholic Bible Association, unlike some other academic associations for the study of scripture, promotes study of the Bible “within a context of faith,” and most of the association’s presidents in its 90-year history have been priests. Levine attends an Orthodox Jewish synagogue.

Some more even-keeled critics of Levine’s presidency focused on this argument. “At some point, we have to ask: what is the word ‘Catholic’ actually doing?” Mark Lambert, co-host of the podcast Catholic Unscripted, posted to X.

Levine, meanwhile, argues that the Catholic Biblical Association is a professional society, not a church. People of all faiths are eligible for membership, as long as they hold an advanced degree in biblical studies.

“An academic society, like a hospital, museum or university, is not the same thing as being a member of the clergy,” Levine wrote in an email to the Forward.

In fact, while Levine is the first Jewish president of the Catholic Biblical Association, she is not the first non-Catholic. Several Protestants have served in the role, according to chair of the executive board Gregory Sterling.

Levine was nominated by a committee and then ran unopposed for the presidency, Sterling said. It is an unpaid, one-year position.

“She was not elected because she is Jewish, but because she is an exceptional scholar and has played a very important role in Catholic-Jewish dialogue,” Sterling and the association’s executive director, Archie Wright, wrote in a joint statement. “The vitriol of some of the comments only reinforces the need to address the problem of Anti-Semitism.”

Several Catholic clergy also wrote letters of support for Levine amid the pushback.

Levine, for her part, said she has “no interest in undermining the Church.” The 70-year-old grew up in North Dartmouth, Massachusetts, in a predominantly Portuguese Roman Catholic neighborhood, where she would occasionally go to Mass with her friends.

She preferred Mass to synagogue because “there were snacks, except you got the snacks in the church during the service, and you got the snacks in synagogue after the service,” she joked in an August interview on Nashville Public Radio.

Levine recalled that when she was 7 years old, a classmate told her she had killed Jesus — an accusation the elementary schooler had picked up from her priest. Levine, confused, went to her mother, who assured her that “God was doing just fine.”

That incident inspired Levine to attend Catholic catechism classes as a child, in addition to Hebrew School.

She went on to get a PhD in religion from Duke University and teach at Vanderbilt University as a professor of both the New Testament and Jewish Studies. Much of her scholarly work revolves around the Jewish context of Jesus and dispelling what she sees as antisemitic misinterpretations of the Bible.

“We do not need to make Judaism look bad in order to make Jesus look good,” Levine posted on Facebook after she was elected.

Catholic-Jewish relations

Sixty years ago, Levine’s election “would have been an astonishing thought,” said Philip Cunningham, director of the Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.

Though the Catholic church has a long history of antisemitism— including violent conversion efforts and teaching the theological belief that Jews were condemned by God — that has all changed in recent decades.

In the 1960s, Pope John XXIII took on the task of modernizing the Church, convening the Second Vatican Council to produce a theological document reconsidering many teachings and practices. The resulting document, often referred to as Vatican II, is perhaps most famous for allowing priests to host Mass in the local vernacular language of their parish instead of Latin. But it also changed Catholicism’s teachings about Jews.

Nostra Aetate, the section of Vatican II most famously concerned with Jews, shifted Catholic teachings about other religions enormously; while still maintaining that the Catholic Church is the “one true religion,” it also affirmed that other religions contain a “ray of truth,” a massive theological shift from the belief that any non-Catholic religion was false or even harmful.

Nostra Aetate spends significant time on Jews, specifically, including rejecting the belief that Jews should be held collectively responsible for killing Jesus. The document calls out antisemitism both theologically and politically.

“What happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today,” it reads. “The Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures.”

Since Vatican II, popes have continued to advance dialogue with Jews, and with members of other religions. And the Church has forcefully rejected antisemitism, continuing to change its teachings on Judaism and Jewishness. That includes removing the term “perfidious Jews” from a Good Friday prayer, updating Catholic school classes on Judaism and even releasing statements acknowledging the legitimacy of Judaism alongside Christianity, placing Jews into a special and elevated relationship with the Church.

“The council set in motion a process of rapprochement between Jews and Catholics that took root particularly effectively in the United States, because the world’s largest Jewish diaspora community lives here and frequently alongside Catholics in cities and suburbs,” Cunningham said.

Levine, too, highlighted the importance of Nostra Aetate to her career, writing in an email that the document’s acceptance of Jews “opened the door for me to work in New Testament studies.”

But not all Catholics embraced the teachings of Vatican II. A diffuse movement often referred to as traditionalist Catholics, or tradcaths, felt that the efforts toward modernization had gone too far. Some tradcath groups simply sought to preserve the rituals of Latin Mass.

Others, however, including the recently excommunicated Society of Saint Pius X, or SSPX, take issue with the council’s teachings, believing that acknowledging the freedom and legitimacy of other religions takes away from the centrality of the Catholic Church’s teachings. In short, if the Catholic Church’s teachings are true, they argue, then no other religion can be legitimate.

The French-language account of SPPX posted to X, calling Levine an “objectively scandalous choice” and denouncing her “relativist interpretation of the texts condemning homosexuality,” as well as the fact that “a person who refuses to recognize Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is placed at the head of an institution that claims to be Catholic.”

Despite the newer Catholic teachings about Judaism, some tradcath groups, as well as individual Catholic influencers such as Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens and Carrie Prejean Boller, have been endorsing antisemitic beliefs including supersessionism and deicide, as well as conspiracy theories about Jewish devil worship or government control. Though the Vatican has chastised these figures and repudiated their stances, they have continued to spread antisemitic dogma, including the belief that Jews hate and seek to oppress Christians and that Kabbalah endorses pedophilia. Many also endorse Christian nationalism, which the Vatican opposes.

This antisemitic subgroup within Catholicism is relatively small, but extremely visible thanks to influencers like Fuentes and Owens with millions of followers, and their understanding of Catholicism spreads to people both inside and outside the church. Their antisemitic version of Catholic ideology, as well as the conspiracy theories they spread, can be seen in some of the hate emails Levine received, such as references to eating babies, a version of the age-old blood libel that Jews used Christian children’s blood to make matzo.

Still, while the antisemitic fringe of the Catholic church is loud, the institutions are stalwart in their support for Vatican II’s acceptance of Judaism.

Levine’s election is an indication “that the changes that Vatican II sought to inspire have been happening,” Cunningham said. “That does not mean that all the issues between Jews and Catholics have been resolved — but at least amongst the much of the leadership in the Catholic community, the old stereotypes and caricatures are recognized for what they are.”

The post She was elected the first Jewish president of the Catholic Biblical Association. Then came the hate. appeared first on The Forward.

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Liberal Jews hail wave of Democratic victories a day after the election

(JTA) — While liberal Jewish Americans reveled in a blue wave of victories after Tuesday’s pivotal midterm elections, centrist and conservative voices issued words of caution about the increasing fragility of the country’s relationship with Israel.

The pro-Israel liberal group J Street hailed the results as a “resounding victory for new politics on Israel and Palestine,” celebrating that 98% of J Street-backed candidates were projected to win their races.

“We are proud to have supported a record number of candidates who share our commitment to Israel’s future, democracy and a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, said in a statement that lists all the successful politicians that had the lobby’s support.

Voters, he argued, rejected the president’s policies and “made clear they want a different direction for America and a different approach in the Middle East.” He pointed to the losses of Republican stalwarts Susan Collins in Maine and Mike Lawler in New York, calling them “prominent champions of the old approach to Israel politics.”

The day before, J Street had said it “ran the largest super PAC investment in organizational history,” raising $10 million for more than 200 candidates. The lobby warned, however, that “AIPAC and its supporters will continue to influence American foreign policy, finding creative ways to override the will of voters with dark money.” AIPAC didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Halie Soifer, CEO of the liberal Jewish Democratic Council of America, likewise lauded the Democratic victories as a referendum on Trump, quipping that the president asked voters to “pretend he was on the ballot in the midterms, and Jewish Americans did just that.”

“Jewish voters are not a monolith, but they widely disapprove of Donald Trump,” she said in a statement, describing the administration’s agenda as “antithetical to core Jewish values.”

Soifer added, “Jewish Americans want leaders who will lower costs, defend our freedoms, stand against antisemitism, support Israel’s security, and hold the Trump administration accountable for its corruption, cruelty, and lawlessness.”

This cycle was JDCA’s largest-ever midterm Jewish voter engagement, involving a seven-figure investment in vast mobilization efforts, the group said in a statement.

JDCA noted that its political action committee ran many targeted ads, including in Ohio and Texas, where Democratic Senate candidates Sherrod Brown and James Talarico defeated their Republican rivals. The group also said its PAC funded ads for successful House candidates Cait Collins in New York, Piya Dandiya and Jared Moskowitz in Florida and Christina Hines in Michigan.

But not all Jewish Democrats were thrilled by the outcome.

Jeff Robbins, a Boston-based attorney and former Democratic Senate staffer, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, said the “obvious” bad news coming out of the election was the normalization of “a vitriolic, occasionally untethered, and all too often fact-less attack on Israel and its bona fides.”

A registered Democrat, Robins said, “it’s painful to hear the enemies of Israel celebrating as they have today, and claiming that this is their referendum on Israel.”

Robbins said that such habituation was already clear in last year’s election of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, an outspoken critic of Israel. This cycle’s shift, he added, was apparent in the success of Abdul El-Sayed in his Michigan Senate race and the primary loss of Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman to former city comptroller Brad Lander.

Robbins also expressed concern about “the push among anybody wanting a career in the Democratic Party” to distance themselves from Israel, which in many cases amounts to antisemitism, he said.

He particularly called out the House wins of Christopher Rabb in Philadelphia, Claire Valdez and Darializa Chevalier in New York City, Melat Kiros in Denver and Troy Jackson in Maine. Jackson, Robbins added, ended up repeating anti-Israel diatribes that have become popular among many members of the progressive left.

“The fact that he defeats somebody who was a stalwart and very knowledgeable friend of Israel, Susan Collins, is more bad news,” he said.

Robbins stressed that the Jewish community must take the results as a “warning sign” and stop assuming that “raising money and honoring people and dinners” is sufficient, without “making the case in the public square.” Members of the pro-Israel Jewish community cannot “just assume that people will realize that, of course, the victims of a genocidal attack are not the perpetrators of a genocide,” he added.

At the same time, Robbins, who also served in the United Nations Commission on Human Rights under former president Bill Clinton, pointed to other results he was happy with. “The good news is that the Democrats elected a number of people who are moderate and therefore sensible when it comes to the realities of the Middle East, and those people’s voices in Congress may be a blessing.”

He acknowledged that the voices of these moderates who support Israel could be consequential in the Democratic caucuses in both the House and the Senate.

Jonathan Greenberg, director for combatting antisemitism at Defending Education and a former AIPAC staffer, called the election as “a disastrous night for the Republican Party.”

“I really don’t think there’s any way for a conservative to look at what happened last night and say that there’s a silver lining,” added Greenberg, who ran for state office in Illinois as a Republican in 2012 but now is unaffiliated.

He called upon Republicans to seize the opportunity to rebuild a stronger foundation, after “years of bad rhetoric and a cycle full of bad candidates.” He slammed Democrats for failing “to police their own side,” while also recognizing that some moderate Israel supporters were successful in this election.

“If the the more blue dog-type Democrats who got elected last night are willing to stand up to the crazies in their party and say, ‘This isn’t us, and you’re not welcome to say things like that in our party,’ then, yeah, that would be great,” he said.

Greenberg credited Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a Florida Democrat, for his outspokenness on this issue, while stressing that “he can’t be the only one.” In Moskowitz’s primary race, he was a staunch defender of Israel against progressive challenger Oliver Larkin.

“You have to have a critical mass of passionate people – the ascendant far left has that right now,” Greenberg added. “If the center doesn’t organize itself and forcefully push back, then they’ll lose.”

For Robbins, this tumultuous period for American Jews has been a long time in the making and is hardly a surprise. He said he has warned Israelis for the past 10 to 15 years about an anti-Zionist shift in the Democratic Party, but he has repeatedly received the response, “Hakol b’seder,” the Hebrew phrase for “everything is OK.”

“I would say, ‘No, kol is not b’seder,’” Robbins concluded.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post Liberal Jews hail wave of Democratic victories a day after the election appeared first on The Forward.

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Republicans made inroads with Jewish voters. Democrats won anyway.

Jewish voters appear to have moved toward Republicans in Tuesday’s midterm elections, even as Democrats won a sweeping victory and regained control of both chambers of Congress.

A national NBC News exit poll found that 68% of Jewish voters supported Democrats, compared with 31% who backed Republican candidates. The same polling firm found in 2024 that 78% of Jews backed Kamala Harris. In Michigan’s closely watched Senate race, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed underperformed in precincts with large Jewish populations compared with other statewide Democratic candidates.

That suggests a smaller Democratic advantage than in previous elections, though differences in polling methods make it difficult to measure the size of the shift.

But some Jewish Democrats dispute the idea that Jewish voters are turning away from their party.

Halie Soifer, chief executive of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, argued that “the Jewish vote was a critical component of a winning democratic coalition,” given that the blue sweep was so big. “This election was a tsunami. It was not won by any one state or by any one election. And therefore, I think it’s important to look at the national numbers, which indicate that the Jewish vote is unchanged from where it was in the last midterm election.”

Soifer pointed to a GBAO Strategies exit poll scheduled for release Thursday, showing that 72% of Jewish voters supported Democratic candidates. That is nearly identical to the 71% who voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 survey also sponsored by J Street. But it is slightly lower than the 74% who supported Democrats in the 2022 midterms and the 77% who backed Joe Biden in 2020.

The results show a complicated picture. Jewish voters remain overwhelmingly Democratic even as some have grown frustrated with the party’s direction on Israel and antisemitism. And any Republican gains among Jewish voters were not enough to overcome the broader Democratic wave.

That was especially clear in Michigan, where El-Sayed, a fierce critic of Israel, defeated Republican Mike Rogers despite concerns among some Jewish Democrats about his views and rhetoric. An exit poll found that 60% of Jewish early voters still supported El-Sayed, while Rogers made some minor gains.

In New York’s 17th Congressional District, Republican Rep. Mike Lawler lost his reelection bid to Democrat Cait Conley, despite receiving overwhelming support in the heavily Hasidic neighborhoods of Rockland County.

Measuring the Jewish vote

Exit polls are not actual vote counts, and the Jewish samples in national surveys are relatively small. Steve Sheffey, a pro-Israel Democratic activist, warned in a Times of Israel essay last year that national polls not specifically designed to measure Jewish voters can produce significantly different results.

The same caution applies when comparing this year’s results with previous elections. Differences in sampling, religious identification and turnout make it hard to measure exactly how many percentage points the Jewish vote has shifted.

Two national surveys conducted earlier this year show Jewish voters remain firmly in the Democratic camp. A September poll by the Jewish Electorate Institute found that 71% of Jewish voters planned to support Democrats for Congress, compared with 23% who planned to support Republicans. Another survey, conducted by GBAO Strategies, found Democrats with a 67%-26% lead among Jewish voters. A 2021 poll found that 74% of Jewish voters approved of the way Joe Biden was handling the U.S.-Israel relationship and 68% had planned to vote for Democrats in the 2022 midterms.

JDCA’s Soifer said “widespread speculation” that Jewish Americans may be leaving the Democratic Party “proved to be absolutely false” nationwide. The outcome “was the largest repudiation of a sitting president that we’ve ever seen, and Jewish voters played a role in that,” she said.

Jewish Democrats crossed party lines in Michigan

Still, a stable Democratic majority does not necessarily mean Jewish voters are satisfied with the party.

The Jewish Electorate Institute survey in September found that 35% of Jewish Democrats said the rise of anti-Israel candidates made it harder to identify with their party. Michigan offered one of the clearest tests of whether those concerns could cause Jewish Democrats to cross party lines in particular races without abandoning their party altogether.

The Mercury Public Affairs survey of 482 Jewish voters who cast ballots before Election Day found that, among Jewish voters who said they backed Sen. Elissa Slotkin in 2024, 23% voted for Rogers this time, and among those who voted for Harris in the presidential election, 18% crossed over to Rogers, while another 11% voted for someone else or skipped the Senate race.

A Republican Jewish Coalition spokesperson pointed to election returns in heavily Jewish precincts as further evidence of a shift. Sam Markstein said unofficial results of Huntington Woods showed a 30-percentage-point shift toward Rogers compared with 2024, while Southfield Township shifted 12.9 points, Birmingham 11.4 points and West Bloomfield Township 7.1 points. The RJC spent $2 million to target the approximately 50,000 Jewish voters in those neighborhoods.

Analysis by Millions of Michiganians, a progressive Super PAC, of 72 precincts with the highest number of Jewish voters, showed El-Sayed receiving 60% of the vote, underperforming the Democratic gubernatorial nominee by just 6.2 percent, with a shift of 1.3 percent compared to 2024.

What comes next?

The larger question is what these results mean for the Democratic Party’s relationship with Jewish Americans.

Soifer acknowledged concerns about the direction of her own party, but maintained, “This election wasn’t about Israel, including for Jewish voters.” She added that the group, along with other liberal Jewish organizations, plans to “play a large role” in helping set the agenda of the new Democratic majorities in Congress.

Nonnegotiable Michigan, a coalition of Michigan rabbis and Jewish Democrats opposing El-Sayed, said in a statement on Wednesday that they hope the party “will govern by reuniting our coalition, delivering for the American people, and rejecting the divisive voices and worldview of those who traffic in antisemitism.”

Other organizations called for continued engagement with leaders in both parties to confront antisemitism and extremism. “We don’t need to agree on everything to know that their partnership will be key to countering antisemitism and protecting democracy,” said Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.

Democrats also celebrated major victories by prominent Jewish politicians, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff. Their success could strengthen their standing in the party in shaping the debate over Israel and antisemitism and raise their profiles as possible contenders for the 2028 presidential nomination.

The post Republicans made inroads with Jewish voters. Democrats won anyway. appeared first on The Forward.

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From pop icon to outspoken Zionist: Boy George’s emotional visit to Nova

(JTA) — RE’IM, Nova Festival Memorial Site, Israel – Iconic 80s pop star Boy George is in Israel this week. He’s made all the usual stops on a celebrity visit: met with the president, placed a note in the Western Wall and, of course, performed two concerts. But it was his visit to the Nova Festival Memorial Site near Kibbutz Re’im on Tuesday that underscored the main reason for his visit.

An outspoken supporter of Jews and Israel, even as he has faced a backlash from within the music industry, the iconic ’80s pop star said that hearing about the massacre and seeing the site where more than 360 people were killed on Oct. 7, 2023 had only strengthened his convictions.

“I saw what happened on October 7… I was up very early, and I saw it, and it just horrified me,” Boy George told a press conference on Tuesday, following a tour of the memorial with former hostages, survivors and other members of the Tribe of Nova Community Association.

“But what horrified me more was hearing people that have no connection to what happened telling me it wasn’t true, that it was made up, and that I shouldn’t believe it,” he said.

Boy George, a British singer who achieved international fame in the 1980s with Culture Club and hits such as “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?” and “Karma Chameleon,” holds a pioneering place in modern pop history. With his androgynous look, Rastafarian-inspired dreadlocks and oversized hats, the white singer challenged conventional ideas about gender and sexuality at a time when doing so could come at a cost.

He countered convention again in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks, speaking out on behalf of Jews and Israel when parts of an entertainment industry were calling for boycotts and blacklists of Israeli performers and their allies.

Boy George, 65, told journalists in Israel this week that he had lost long-time friends over his position on Israel, but said he was not particularly troubled by it, because he felt he was doing the right thing.

“I feel odd being thanked for doing what’s just normal,” he said. “Music should make people feel safe, celebrated, and like they belong. That’s the music I want to make.”
The singer said some of the reactions to his support for Israel have been “shocking to me, but also a bit predictable.”

He said that the attacks against him have ranged from bashing his music to calling him “irrelevant,” and even accusing him of being a “Zionist.”

“Until I started getting called a Zionist, I hadn’t really explored what it meant, and then I was like, ‘well, I guess it must be,’” Boy George said. “In the end, I just put a thing up [on social media] saying, ‘I’m a Zionist, get over it.’”

Two incidents this year solidified his support for Jews and Israel. In April, he arrived in the London Jewish neighborhood of Golders Green and witnessed the aftermath of the stabbing of two Jewish men. He later went on British television, tearily condemning the attack and calling for support for “our Jewish community.”

In May, at a travelling exhibit about the Nova attack, he heard the testimony of a young survivor, May Hayat. The 33-year-old Tel Avivian witnessed the murder of two friends before Hamas terrorists set her free.

Moved by Hayat’s story, the singer wrote “We Will Dance Again,” a slogan he borrowed from the Tribe of Nova community. Released on July 26, its lyrics include, “you say genocide / I say war.”

“One of the things I’ve always hated doing is explaining why I’ve written something,” Boy George said of the song, which drew massive criticism from some in the music industry but has become an anthem for Israelis.

“Very often, what I write is sort of personal, a little bit surreptitious, secretive… but I’m afraid with ‘We Will Dance Again,’ there was no secrecy or subtext whatsoever,” he said.

“I kept hearing that word [genocide] over and over and over and obviously, I’ve done a bit of research on the word, and I know it wasn’t the right word and I felt, well, if it’s being bandied about by every single person that I speak to, then maybe I should put it in the song,” he said.

The singer also highlighted another line from the song: “If you’re ever confused / I stand with the Jews.”

The singer said he doubted the song would get airplay, “but it really wasn’t about that… it was about what do I need to do about what I feel deeply inside.”

Speaking to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Hayat said she was flattered that Boy George was inspired to write a song after hearing her story, but added that this was precisely why she now devotes her time to telling others what happened on Oct. 7.

“If I was saved and I am still alive, then I have to tell this story for myself and for those who can’t tell their story,” she said. The song “strengthens me in doing what I am doing.”

Boy George said that being at the site of the Nova festival was “very powerful.”
“Obviously, you can see there’s a lot of healing that’s gone on, and that’s really important because an outsider never knows what they’re supposed to feel,” he said, after touring the memorial, which includes photos of each victim, as well as tributes from friends and family.

Boy George was accompanied to the Nova site by Sylvan Adams, president of the World Jewish Congress Israel. Adams, together with the Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem and Live Nation Israel. Boy George was accompanied to the Nova site by Sylvan Adams, president of the World Jewish Congress Israel. Adams, together with the Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem donated 1,500 concert tickets to Nova survivors and bereaved families so they could attend Saturday night’s concert.

“At a time when too many international artists have chosen to boycott Israel or remain silent in the face of antisemitism, you chose to come,” said Adams. “You used your voice and your international platform to stand with the Jewish people, despite the threats and boycotts. That takes courage. And moral clarity.”

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post From pop icon to outspoken Zionist: Boy George’s emotional visit to Nova appeared first on The Forward.

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