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Teens consider Jewish stake in abortion battle one year after Dobbs decision
This article was produced as part of JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives.
(JTA) — One year after the Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson reversed the federal guarantee of women’s abortion rights, a group of young activists are encouraging their peers to consider the ruling’s ramifications through a distinctly Jewish and teen-focused lens.
“I was distraught after the Dobbs decision leak came out, and I did not know how anybody in power could do that,” said Emily Levine, a junior at Scarsdale (New York) High School, after a webinar by and for teens that she co-organized to mark the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision, the gist of which was leaked in May 2022. “Especially to me as somebody getting ready to go off to college, feeling like I had no control and it was my body and my life that they were affecting.”
Levine, a participant in the Kol Koleinu Teen Feminist Fellowship — a program of Moving Traditions, a Jewish youth organization — partnered with another fellow, Noa Gezler, to organize the webinar. Held June 11, it included 30 teens.
Gezler, a junior at the Abraham Joshua Heschel High School in New York, worked on the event in response to the “existential crisis” she faced following the court decision.
Panelists expert in medicine, law and religion addressed the intersection of reproductive rights and Judaism.
“The overarching piece that links my Jewish work with my legal work is really about the power of text and interpretation,” said panelist Ariella Dubler, head of school at the Heschel School during the 90-minute event. “Roe[v. Wade], Dobbs, any issue that you care about that has constitutional roots, there are multiple ways to look at that text,” said Dubler, previously the George Welwood Murray Professor of Legal History at Columbia Law School.
Most American Jews and their representative organizations back abortion access, although Orthodox organizations support restrictions that allow abortion only under rare circumstances.
Last year Moving Traditions issued a statement calling the Dobbs decision a “horrifying rollback of fundamental rights for all people in the U.S.”
Dubler urged the teens “to really master a set of skills of interpretation that will let you work with other people to build movements and power around the issues you care about.”
“The best way to fight for what you believe in is to really appreciate the power of your interpretive skills in conversation with others,” said Dubler. “What I hope everyone going off to college takes with you is that you are as powerful as the skills and the communities that you build.”
Panelist Emily Birenbaum, a Jewish obstetrician/gynecologist in Berkeley, California, said that after taking a long break from clinical gynecology, she felt a “moral obligation” to return to her prior field to ensure that young women were receiving appropriate reproductive care in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision. “What brought me back to women’s health was the fact that women’s rights were being trampled and taken away and somebody who was not ready to become a parent was going to be forced into becoming a parent,” she said.
Amanda Kleinman, senior cantor at the Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, New York, reviewed Biblical texts that convey understandings of abortion in Judaism. Kleinman cited a case from Exodus where a pregnant woman sustains an injury as a bystander during a fight and miscarries. The party who shoved the woman is required to pay a fine, but is not held accountable for murder.
Noa Gezler, a junior at the Abraham Joshua Heschel High School in New York, co-organized the Moving Traditions event in response to the “existential crisis” she faced following the court decision striking down Roe v. Wade. (Screenshot)
“The fetus holds a status that is different from the status for instance of the mother of the fetus, and the life of the pregnant person is the most important value in this conversation. The Jewish tradition even requires that a pregnancy be terminated if the life of the person who is pregnant is at risk,” she said.
As a native of Texas, which has one of the strictest abortion bans in the United States, she described her “strong obligation as a spiritual leader of a congregation to use the platform that I have to help make sure that members of my congregation have the opportunity to explore this issue [abortion] from a Jewish perspective.”
After the webinar, Gezler and Levine told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that they became involved with Moving Traditions and designed the webinar to educate other teens about restrictions on reproductive rights and encourage them to act. “It is really hard to get taken seriously [as a teen] and educating yourself and having the facts and knowing what you are talking about. Being able to back that up has been really important to getting what we want [and] to make our voices heard,” said Levine.
She and Gezler want teens to be empowered to fight for social change. “Teens are the future. Teens are the present. Teens have the power to make this change and not only that, but this is our world and we are soon going to be the people in positions of power, in leadership positions, controlling the future of the world,” said Levine.
Reflecting on the event, Gezler said “the effect it has on me as a Jewish teen is that it gives me hope. Looking at the incredibly wise Jewish adults sharing their knowledge with Jewish teens and rallying the Jewish community in the face of challenge teaches me about my own rights as a Jew but also shows me that my community supports my religious and privacy rights.”
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The post Teens consider Jewish stake in abortion battle one year after Dobbs decision appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Lindsey Graham urges Israel not to strike Iranian oil depots even as he says he helped make war happen
(JTA) — Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has called on Israel to rein in its attacks on Iranian oil infrastructure, marking a rare note of caution from a Republican lawmaker who has said he helped push the United States to join Israel in waging war against Iran.
In a post on X on Sunday, Graham praised Israel for its role in the war before adding that “there will be a day soon that the Iranian people will be in charge of their own fate, not the murderous ayatollah’s regime.”
“In that regard, please be cautious about what targets you select,” continued Graham. “Our goal is to liberate the Iranian people in a fashion that does not cripple their chance to start a new and better life when this regime collapses. The oil economy of Iran will be essential to that endeavor.”
Graham’s post linked to an Axios article that reported that the United States was alarmed by Israeli strikes over the weekend that targeted 30 Iranian fuel depots. On Monday, U.S. gas prices rose to their highest levels since 2024.
The warning from Graham, an ally of President Donald Trump and staunch supporter of Israel, comes days after the Republican hawk told the Wall Street Journal that he had played a key role in urging Trump to strike Iran.
Prior to the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, Graham made several trips to Israel where he met with members of the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu whom he said he coached on how to lobby Trump to strike Iran.
“They’ll tell me things our own government won’t tell me,” Graham told the newspaper.
On Monday, Graham also directed his criticism at Saudi Arabia’s decision to stay on the sidelines of the campaign against Iran.
“It is my understanding the Kingdom refuses to use their capable military as a part of an effort to end the barbaric and terrorist Iranian regime who has terrorized the region and killed 7 Americans,” wrote Graham in a post on X Monday. “Question – why should America do a defense agreement with a country like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that is unwilling to join a fight of mutual interest?”
The post Lindsey Graham urges Israel not to strike Iranian oil depots even as he says he helped make war happen appeared first on The Forward.
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Belgian officials investigating synagogue explosion as possible act of terrorism
(JTA) — Belgian officials are investigating an explosion in front of a synagogue in Liège early Monday as a possible act of terrorism.
The explosion, which took place at 4 a.m., damaged the door of the historic neo-Romanesque synagogue and blew out the windows of multiple buildings across the street. No injuries were reported.
A range of Belgian politicians, including the prime minister and the mayor of Liège, characterized the explosion as act of antisemitism.
“Antisemitism is an attack on our values and our society, and we must fight it unequivocally,” Prime Minister Bart de Wever said in a statement. “We stand in solidarity with the Jewish community in Liege and across the country.”
The explosion comes amid a surge of concern about possible attacks by agents associated with the Iranian regime, against which the United States and Israel launched a war last week. Iran has a long record of supporting attacks on Jewish targets abroad, including two bombings in the 1990s in Argentina that killed more than 100 people at the Israeli embassy and a Jewish community center. Now, with Iran being pummeled at home, watchdogs are warning that it might lash out through its Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, responsible for attacks abroad.
Azerbaijan said Friday that it had foiled multiple terror attacks planned by Iranian agents on Jewish sites. In London, four men were arrested last week for allegedly spying on the Jewish community for Iran, with the intent of planning attacks against the community. And a string of shootings at synagogues in Toronto has ignited concern in Canada, too.
Iranian agents have taken aim at non-Jewish targets, too. On Friday, a Pakistani man who prosecutors said had been directed by Iran’s IRGC was convicted of plotting to assassinate President Donald Trump.
The attack in Liège, in the primarily French-speaking Wallonia province, comes amid a range of recent developments that have unsettled Belgian Jews, who number approximately 30,000. They include antisemitic carnival caricatures in the city of Aalst; a ban on ritual slaughter preventing the local production of kosher meat; and an ongoing row between U.S. and Belgian officials over Jewish circumcision practices. The attack also follows a 2014 shooting in which a gunman associated with the Islamic State, a rival to Iran’s Islamic Republic, shot four people to death at the Jewish Museum in Brussels.
A spokesperson for the Liège police described the effects to the area as “only material damage” to the 1899 building. Rabbi Joshua Nejman told local media that he was hoping that security footage would reveal the perpetrator.
“I’m going to try to calm my heart, because it is beating faster and faster this morning,” said Nejman, who said he had been at the synagogue for 25 years.
“Liege is home to a very small but vibrant Jewish community where I personally grew up,” Eitan Bergman, vice president of the Coordinating Committee of Jewish Organisations in Belgium, told Reuters. “Today, the feelings among our community members are a mixture of sadness, worry and profound shock.”
Liege’s mayor, Willy Demeyer, praised the synagogue community to RBTF, Belgium’s French-language national broadcaster. He added, “We cannot allow foreign conflicts to be imported into our city.”
The post Belgian officials investigating synagogue explosion as possible act of terrorism appeared first on The Forward.
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The Top 100 People Positively Influencing Jewish Life, 2025
In honor of The Algemeiner‘s 12th annual gala, we are proud to present our “J100” list — 100 individuals who have positively influenced Jewish life over the past year.