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The End Jew Hatred Movement is spreading across the country — and sparking controversy
(New York Jewish Week) — Last month, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Jewish Democrat, proclaimed April 29 “End Jew Hatred Day,” citing “an urgent need to act against antisemitism in Colorado and across the country.”
Similar proclamations came from New York Rep. Mike Lawler, a Republican, and dozens of other elected officials nationwide.
But in the New York City Council, an identical effort proved controversial. While the overwhelmingly Democratic council approved April 29 as End Jew Hatred Day annually, six council members either abstained from or voted against what organizers had intended to be an unanimous decision.
The initiative behind the proclamations, called the End Jew Hatred Movement, is a relatively new presence based in New York City that is increasingly making its voice known nationally — through rallies, petitions, a relentless press campaign and now in the halls of government. One measure that demonstrates the initiative’s growth is the number of April 29 proclamations. Last year, there were a handful. This year, according to End Jew Hatred, there were 30.
The movement also provided the spark for the unexpected opposition in the New York City Council. Lawmakers who did not support the proclamation said they demurred because the End Jew Hatred Movement, while run by people who say they “set aside politics and ideology,” has been associated with right-wing Jewish activists.
End Jew Hatred doesn’t publicize much about its structure or funding. It is not a registered nonprofit organization, and would not tell the New York Jewish Week its annual budget or how it receives donations.
Its backers call it an unapologetic voice that’s fighting a growing problem, antisemitism, while its critics say it is an attempt to inject hawkish rhetoric into a national effort to combat anti-Jewish persecution. Amid that debate, the movement’s growth, and its successful spearheading of resolutions nationwide, show how an initiative founded by conservative activists has wielded influence in the conversation about antisemitism, even in liberal political spaces.
Here’s what we know about End Jew Hatred, how it’s establishing itself in New York City and beyond, and why its activities are drawing backlash.
A movement founded in the politics of 2020
Founded in New York City near the beginning of the pandemic, End Jew Hatred first drew local attention in October 2020, when it organized a rally in front of the New York Public Library protesting the way its activists said New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo were unfairly targeting Orthodox New Yorkers with public health restrictions.
Haredi New Yorkers and their backers railed against the city’s regulations that year, and claimed that policies limiting group prayer and other religious ceremonies were selectively enforced against their communities.
“Never in my life did I think I would see this type of blatant Jew-hatred from our public officials,” Brooke Goldstein, who founded End Jew Hatred, said at the rally, which drew dozens of protesters. “Singling out New York Jews for blame in the coronavirus spread is unconscionable and discriminatory.”
But while the movement’s first significant action concerned the pandemic, a spokesman for End Jew Hatred said it was inspired by another seismic event that took place in 2020: the racial justice protests and the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement.
“How can we replicate this for the Jewish people?” said Gerard Filitti, senior counsel for the organization Goldstein directs, the Lawfare Project, describing End Jew Hatred’s genesis. “We saw antisemitism shoot up during the pandemic. So it was kind of the right time to launch this idea.”
Since then, in addition to spearheading the proclamations, the initiative has continued holding rallies, protesting the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which aids Palestinian refugees, for “promoting Jew hatred”; speaking out against antisemitism in Berlin, Toronto and other cities around the globe; and, earlier this year, opposing a reported plea bargain for the men who assaulted Joseph Borgen while he was en route to a pro-Israel rally in May 2021. It was also a signatory on a letter to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg protesting the plea deal, and members of the movement showed up to the alleged attackers’ court hearing.
Nearly three years after its launch, the movement remains opaque about its structure, declining to share any financial information or elaborate on its relationship to the Lawfare Project, which bills itself as an “international pro-Israel litigation fund.” In a brief statement to the New York Jewish Week, a spokesperson for End Jew Hatred said the organization accepts donations from local community members and support from like-minded nonprofit groups, though he declined to detail how those donations were processed.
“Our network of activists spans the globe, from New York City to Los Angeles, from Toronto to Berlin,” he said. “Also, the movement is supported by people from all walks of life who donate both their time and money to make the movement a success. Activists are encouraged to fundraise within their community, and some actions have been supported by organizations that have taken part in them.”
Roots in pro-Israel and right-wing activism
The Lawfare Project, Goldstein’s group, has represented Jewish students who settled a discrimination lawsuit with San Francisco State University, and the following year, represented an Israeli organization that settled a suit with the National Lawyers’ Guild, after the guild declined to place the group’s ad in its annual dinner journal.
This year, the group is providing legal aid to a Las Vegas-area Jewish teen who had a swastika drawn onto his back. And it sued the mayor of Barcelona over her decision to sever ties with Tel Aviv.
Goldstein also has a history of right-wing activism and controversial statements. She has made appearances on conservative news networks such as Fox News, One America News and Newsmax. She once said that “there’s no such thing as a Palestinian person,” and on Election Day in 2016, tweeted, “Can I run the anti-anti-islamophobia department in the Trump administration?”
Goldstein has said she sees Ronald Lauder — the philanthropist, World Jewish Congress president and conservative donor — as an ally. In a virtual conversation between the two hosted by Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue Synagogue last year, Goldstein thanked Lauder for his “support and his friendship,” and Lauder called Goldstein “so smart and wonderful.” Lauder was also involved with the movement’s effort to establish End Jew Hatred Day in New York City last year.
Ronald S Lauder, President of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) recorded before a bilateral a conversation with Chancellor Scholz. (Michael Kappeler/Getty Images)
End Jew Hatred has also worked with Dov Hikind, a former Brooklyn Democratic state assemblyman who now runs a group called Americans Against Antisemitism. Hikind’s group has partnered with End Jew Hatred, and he has appeared at its events. Hikind told the New York Jewish Week that his group and End Jew Hatred are “involved in terms of pushing the same agenda.”
Hikind has stirred controversy as well: In 2013, he wore blackface as part of a Purim costume, and in 2005, sponsored a bill that would have allowed police to profile Middle Eastern men on the subway. He was a follower of the late right-wing extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane.
Controversy or consensus?
Even as its right-wing connections have sparked suspicion from progressive activists, End Jew Hatred has garnered support from establishment Jewish groups. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations promoted End Jew Hatred Day on Twitter last week, posting a graphic with the logo of the movement. And the city’s Jewish Community Relations Council also backed the City Council resolution.
“All people, regardless of party affiliation, have a role to play in combating antisemitism and other forms of hatred, and we should not lose sight of that,” a JCRC spokesperson told the New York Jewish Week. “From our perspective, every day should be End Jew Hatred Day.”
Lauder has also advocated the use of the term “Jew hatred” in place of antisemitism in a video published by the World Jewish Congress that has been viewed more than 480,000 times.
“No one is embarrassed anymore when they’re called an antisemite,” he said. “Antisemitism must be called what it really is: Jew hatred.”
That view is not universally shared among antisemitism watchdogs. Holly Huffnagle, the American Jewish Committee’s U.S. director for combating antisemitism, said that the term “Jew hatred” is “jarring” and “makes people stop and think.” But she said the term does not capture the way antisemitism is often expressed via coded conspiratorial language.
“[People] might not know what [the term] antisemitism is, but Jew hatred they know,” she said. “In that sense it can be used to get attention, to help people call it out.”
“On the other hand, the antisemitism we see today, in its primary form, which is conspiratorial, is not captured by the term ‘Jew hatred,’” she added. “I hear from a variety of people that they don’t hate Jews, they’re against Jew hatred, they’re not antisemitic, but they believe that Jews have too much power [or] they control the media.”
And End Jew Hatred’s right-wing ties have also made some progressive activists in its home base of New York City wary of its motives. The lead sponsor of the City Council’s End Jew Hatred Day resolution was Queens Republican Inna Vernikov, a former aide to Hikind who has previously spotlighted antisemitism allegations at the City University of New York.
Her resolution, which passed overwhelmingly, garnered a mix of 14 co-sponsors, including some prominent Jewish Democrats and all six of the council’s Republicans — two of whom have links, respectively, to white supremacists and a person arrested for storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Council Member Inna Vernikov introduced a resolution to create an annual “End Jew Hatred” day in the New York City Council on April 27, 2023. (New York City Council Flickr)
Those right-wing connections were part of what led six progressive council members to either abstain from or vote against the resolution. One of the council members who voted no, Brooklyn’s Shahana Hanif, told the New York Jewish Week that she has participated in multiple actions against antisemitism but opposed the resolution because she didn’t want to endorse End Jew Hatred as a movement.
“Antisemitism is real,” Hanif said. “I understand the urgency. I understand the opportunity when there is a resolution or any kind of symbolic gesture that comes along, that every legislator wants to be united in supporting our Jewish colleagues. But in the same breath, it is our responsibility to know who is leading on these efforts.”
City Comptroller Brad Lander, a prominent Jewish progressive politician, vouched for Hanif’s record of standing up to antisemitism and echoed her concerns. He told the New York Jewish Week that End Jew Hatred’s activists are “right-wingers who have a track record of working very closely with people who foment hatred.”
Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, a progressive group, also opposed the resolution. Rafael Shimunov, a member of the group, said the resolution was “clearly associated with the right,” and noted that at a hearing ahead of the vote, an activist decried bail reform, something right-wing advocates have pushed for years to repeal.
Shimunov also took issue with remarks Vernikov has made about George Soros, the billionaire Jewish liberal megadonor who has become an avatar of right-wing antisemitism, and whom Vernikov called ”an evil man, who happens to be Jewish.” JFREJ activists also noted that also noted that some Republican cosponsors of the bill, such as Vernikov, Vickie Paladino and Joann Ariola, have called for transgender women to be barred from women’s sports at schools and universities. In addition, Paladino has a history of anti-LGBTQ comments. The activists say these views undercut the council members’ calls to oppose hatred directed at Jews.
End Jew Hatred’s supporters dismissed accusations that their cause is right-wing. In a text message, Vernikov told the New York Jewish Week that “this resolution has nothing to do with politics or right-wing extremists.” Hikind also echoed that message.
“Everyone in the Jewish community supported this idea,” Hikind said. “To say it’s just right-wing organizations is dishonest and hypocritical.”
Filliti, the Lawfare counsel, said the aim of the resolution — and End Jew Hatred as a whole — was to send “a unifying message.”
“We’re not looking to make this political,” he said. “We have had so much success with this and we are so happy to see this going forward.”
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Antisemitic incidents in Germany remained elevated in 2025, fueled by rise-in far-right cases
(JTA) — BERLIN — The number of annual antisemitic incidents in Germany remains at a high, with right-wing extremism surging, according to a report issued Wednesday by the country’s leading antisemitism watchdog.
An average of 24 antisemitic incidents per day were reported in Germany in 2025, totaling 8,725, about the same as in 2024, according to the report from the Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism, a nonprofit that is known by its German acronym RIAS. The total has been consistently high since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, according to the group.
“These are not statistical outliers; it is the grim reality in Germany,” Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said at a press conference in Berlin announcing the annual tally.
The numbers reflect a concrete impact on Jews in Germany, said RIAS executive director Benjamin Steinitz, who coauthored the report with researcher Bianca Loy. They urged continued funding for programs to report incidents and additional help for victims.
Many documented cases occurred in everyday settings, RIAS reported: In Kehl, four members of the Jewish community were insulted and spat on outside a Jewish prayer room. In Hesse, a rabbi was shoved in a supermarket in front of his children and had his cell phone snatched from him. According to RIAS, the victims in these incidents were blamed for Israeli actions.
But it was incidents with a right-wing extremist background that shot up most, amounting to 807, up from 562 in 2024 – the highest figure since nationwide surveys began in 2020. They outnumbered incidents of a left-wing imperialist (501) and Islamist extremist (166) background.
Right-wing incidents included conspiracy theories, glorification of the Nazi regime, and calls for a repeat of the Holocaust. The incidents also have become more openly violent, researchers said.
For example, a right-wing extremist group in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania shouted “Jews to the wall” on a bus, mocked the Holocaust and threatened refugees as well as passengers who intervened.
The release of the 2025 antisemitism tally came the same day as a new poll finding a best-ever standing among voters for the far-right party Alternative for Germany. The party’s rhetoric, which includes nativism and calling to move on from the shadow of the Holocaust, has ignited allegations of antisemitism from leading Jewish voices in Germany, even as the party and its defenders say its policies are ideal to keep Jews safe.
The RIAS report found that the internet continued to be a major platform for antisemitism: More than a quarter of all antisemitic incidents (2,314 incidents, or 27%) occurred online, including nearly 43% of documented threats, including death threats. It cited as an example messages received by a Jewish woman that included an image of a Zyklon B canister with the comment “Still in stock.” Zyklon B was the chemical the Nazis used to asphyxiate victims in gas chambers.
Four cases of extreme violence were reported, including a knife attack in February 2025 at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin. The victim, who was Spanish, was saved by an emergency doctor. The perpetrator was sentenced to 13 years in prison in March.
In a recent interview with Deutsche Welle, Schuster said Jewish community members in major cities have told him they worry “about appearing in public as visibly Jewish — for instance, by wearing a kippah or a Star of David as jewelry.” He said the concern is not as acute in less populous areas.
RIAS — which subscribes to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism — attributes more than two-thirds of the incidents (68%, or 5,916 cases) last year to Israel-related antisemitism.
Anti-Israel gatherings continued to be major hubs for antisemitic incidents, though the total number of such gatherings dropped slightly to 1,210 (from 1,358 the previous year), according to the report. There was also a drop in incidents at Islamic/Islamist gatherings, to 43 in 2025, down from 58 in 2024.
On the other hand, the number of incidents at gatherings had risen within left-wing extremist circles, from 131 in 2024 to 214 last year; and in the right-wing extremist camp, 96 incidents at gatherings were reported — nearly double that of 2024.
RIAS has rejected criticism by Diaspora Alliance, an international group that addresses antisemitism from a progressive stance, that its data overemphasizes Israel-related antisemitism and underestimates far-right incidents.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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The manosphere says women owe their husbands sex — Judaism says the opposite
The poll posted by writer Emily May on X asked: “Married women, have you ever said yes to sex because you didn’t want to deal with his moodiness if you said no?”
Over 5,000 people responded. The majority — 72% — were men, despite the fact that the question was directed at married women. Manosphere influencers, including self-proclaimed misogynist and antisemite Andrew Tate, jumped in to use the post as a proof that women use sex to manipulate men, and generally denigrate any woman who turns a man down. Gendered ideas of marriage and sexual drive — that men need sex physically, that women want to “trap” men into marriage — percolate constantly in manosphere and incel circles, and May’s posts sent the internet into a predictable tizzy.
The question of sex within marriage — how often to have it, whether it requires consent, and whether women owe it to their husbands — has been a matter of debate for, arguably, centuries. Marital rape wasn’t outlawed in all 50 states until 1993. The U.S. imported British common law, in which, as 17th century English jurist Matthew Hale put it, a “husband cannot be guilty of a rape” because marriage means that “the wife hath given up herself in this kind to her husband which she cannot retract.” In short, a wife cannot turn down her husband.
Marital rape is illegal in the U.S. in the contemporary era, but the presumptions that women owe their husband sex have continued. And undergirding all of these assumptions in many of the discussions is a Christian idea of marriage and sex.
In Christian subreddits, people discuss the idea that, in marriage, the two become one flesh, and the women must submit to their husbands, concluding that this means the woman cannot refuse the man as her body belongs to him. They cite First Corinthians 7:4-5, which says a couple cannot “deprive” the other except by mutual agreement to abstain for prayer, and that the “wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband.”
It says the same of the husband’s body, though few commenters note this line. But in Judaism, this is in fact the main focus. While both religions agree that sex is a fundamental part of marriage, the emphasis in Judaism is not that the wife owes it to her husband. Instead, it’s that a husband owes it to his wife. Within limits.
The Talmud is very specific on those limits. First of all, there are the menstrual purity laws, which forbid sex during menstruation as well as for seven days after the bleeding has stopped, which means that for about two weeks out of the month, observant couples are forbidden from having sex.
More to the point of the current debate, the Talmud — in the Ketubot tractate, dealing with the laws of marriage — also speaks very explicitly to the realities of life: That people get tired, exhausted and aren’t in the mood for intimacy. Still, it says, there are limits on the excuses. And these relate to exactly how taxing one’s job and daily duties are.
The rules are as follows: A man who is unemployed must offer his wife sex every day, because there is nothing exhausting him. Workers or laborers must be available twice a week if they work in the city in which they live. Donkey drivers — e.g. those whose work requires traveling shorter distances — are obligated to offer once a week, while camel drivers, who must travel long distances, must return home and offer their wives sex at least once a month. Sailors must return home to do the same every six months. And students of the Torah may leave home to study for up to 30 days — but they must then spend a full month at home with their wife.
In each of these cases, the wife isn’t obligated to accept any offer of sex; in fact, the wife can give permission for her husband to be gone longer — perhaps to take a job in another city to support the family, which would result in less sex. But she can also demand he stay closer to home so he can fulfill his conjugal duties. Sex is her right, not her obligation.
Her pleasure is also the focus. Men are instructed to court their wives, not simply rush to sex — to learn from “the rooster, which first cajoles the hen and then mates with it.” In tractate Eruvim, a man is not only explicitly forbidden from having sex with his wife without her consent, but also from doing so in any way that causes her discomfort, emotional or physical — e.g. pushing for her consent or making her unhappy, or even having sex that isn’t pleasurable for her.
What is clear from all of the writing is that the presumption of the rabbis is that it is more likely that the man, for reasons of exhaustion or work or even another wife, might avoid having sex with a desiring woman. This isn’t to say that Jewish text is perfect in its conception of women; there are, of course, plenty of other problematic, less empowering ideas about women in Jewish text. A man has a right to divorce his wife, for example, for all kinds of reasons, including spoiling his dinner, while she cannot divorce him. Still, it’s fascinating that the Jewish approach to sex and gender turns the common gender expectations around sex in modern Western society upside-down.
Today, the dominant stereotypes presume men are horny and desirous at all times, and women are far less sexual. Those are not neutral ideas; just looking at the discourse raging online right now, it’s clear those presumptions drive a lot of misogynistic hate, like the idea that women would only use sex as a way to entrap men. People take these gendered beliefs about sex as though they’re unassailable truisms about the world.
But they’re clearly not; for millennia, Jewish culture has believed the opposite. The reality is nothing is so clearcut, and different people of any gender have different relationships to sex, and different libidos. The internet isn’t a great place for that kind of nuance, but maybe — just maybe — if people realized their conclusions aren’t as foundational, or as God-given, as they thought, they might reexamine their assumptions.
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Georgia’s Jewish senator called his newly minted GOP opponent an antisemite. Why?
(JTA) — After Rep. Mike Collins won a hard-fought Republican runoff election in Georgia Tuesday for the party’s Senate nomination in November, his opponent wasted no time going on the offensive.
“Donald Trump’s handpicked candidate Mike Collins is a notorious bigot, antisemite, and extremist,” Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff posted on social media on Tuesday night.
Ossoff, who is Jewish, did not elaborate on the antisemitism allegation in the post, which continued with other attack lines against Collins. But Collins and some of his senior staff members have faced well-documented past allegations of antisemitism in a state that’s home to an estimated 100,000-plus Jewish adults.
“Whether he’s socializing with a known Nazi, speaking in antisemitic dog whistles, or doubling down after targeting a Jewish reporter, Mike Collins’ record of bigotry and antisemitism speaks for itself,” Valeria Rivadeneira-Crandell, a spokesperson for Ossoff’s campaign, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a statement.
The Collins campaign did not return a request for comment for this article.
The Ossoff campaign provided links to multiple incidents. In one instance in 2024, Collins came under hot water after replying favorably to a tweet from an antisemitic account that appeared to reference a Washington Post reporter’s Jewish background. “Was never any doubt,” Collins, who has said he runs his own X account, wrote at the time.
Following backlash, including from some Georgia state lawmakers, Collins doubled down, writing, “I guess pointing out that a Washington Post journo excusing crime because she believes USA is on ‘stolen land’ makes her a garbage human is anti-Semitic? Y’all just see stuff that ain’t there.”
Collins, a Trump-endorsed MAGA loyalist with a trollish social media streak in a closely watched swing state, won his runoff with more than 55% of the vote, according to Associated Press tallies. His win came the same night as Trump’s preferred pick for governor of Georgia lost his own GOP primary runoff.
Collins has leaned heavily into nativist proposals and language, including sponsoring a bill to end birthright citizenship. He also approvingly shared a 2024 video of a University of Mississippi fraternity mocking a Black pro-Palestinian protester with monkey noises.
Collins also defended the New York Young Republicans shortly after that organization’s antisemitic group texts were leaked to the press. “I don’t care about some group chat,” Collins tweeted in October, accompanied by a picture of Laken Riley, the Georgia nursing student whose 2024 murder by an undocumented immigrant spurred a GOP-led push for harsher penalties on migrants.
Collins went on to attend a New York Young Republicans gala that also honored far-right German politician Markus Frohnmaier and featured appearances from several antisemitic figures, including the livestreamer Sneako.
The congressman has also come under scrutiny for some of his current and former staffers’ behavior.
Last month a report in Slate, citing leaked text messages, found that Collins’ chief of staff Kip Talley had participated in a group chat with white supremacist influencers Nick Fuentes and Richard Spencer. Talley wrote in December chats that his goal was to “try and use the levers of the legislative branch” to help Holocaust denier and right-wing activist Charles C. Johnson, who was then incarcerated on contempt of court charges related to falsely presenting himself as an FBI informant.
Talley told his chat mates that he was “reaching out to my people at FBI and DOJ” and “trying to get him out,” referring to Johnson. At the time, Talley was Collins’ deputy chief of staff. He was promoted to chief of staff in January. Johnson was released from prison in February.
Talley, who remains in his role with Collins, told Slate he had “acted solely in my personal capacity after hearing concerns that an acquaintance I have known for years was being mistreated in custody and denied basic medical care.” He added that he “did not act at the direction of Rep. Collins, use official resources, or coordinate with anyone else in the group chat.”
Collins also formerly employed William Paul, who last month made a series of antisemitic comments to Jewish GOP Rep. Mike Lawler. Paul, son of Sen. Rand Paul, had been Collins’ digital director in early 2025 but had not been on the congressman’s staff for nearly a year at the time of his altercation with Lawler.
Amid such comments and associations, Collins has also maintained a resolutely pro-Israel stance within a MAGA movement that is quickly fracturing over Israel. He spoke at a memorial event in his home state marking the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack, vowing to “make sure that Israel has the resources to defend themselves,” and he has continued to refer to Israel as “our ally.” Prior to the 2024 election, he tweeted, “I bet money Iran wouldn’t be attacking Israel if Trump was president.”
Ossoff, too, has positioned himself as an Israel supporter, but he has recently voted against some weapons sales to the country. That has upset many Georgia Jewish organizations, who in 2024 penned an open letter — signed by several synagogues, Jewish schools, the local Anti-Defamation League and other groups — opposing the senator’s vote against arms sales.
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