Uncategorized
The quest to replace Park East Synagogue’s 92-year-old rabbi is not going smoothly
(New York Jewish Week) — More than a year after it attracted attention for the abrupt termination of its popular assistant rabbi, Manhattan’s Park East Synagogue was again the scene of a heated squabble on Sunday.
And like last time, the spat centered on who will succeed the Orthodox congregation’s 92-year-old spiritual leader, Rabbi Arthur Schneier.
In the time since the former assistant rabbi, Benjamin Goldschmidt, was ousted, no one has been appointed to take Schneier’s place after his tenure ends. The synagogue announced a search for a “worthy successor” to Schneier 11 months ago, and a public event on Sunday night was supposed to herald the next stage in that process. A candidate for the position, Rabbi Yitzchok Schochet, delivered an hour-long lecture to a crowd of 100 people, including members of the search committee.
But following the talk, the event held in the synagogue’s Charles Brooks Ballroom devolved into a verbal sparring match between Schochet, the rabbi of London’s Mill Hill Synagogue, and Kalman Sporn, a political consultant who describes himself as a “human rights activist.” Sporn questioned Schochet’s past outspoken opposition to same-sex relationships. Schochet claimed that Sporn was engaging in “cancel culture.”
“Park East’s bimah is New York’s hallowed ground for human dignity,” Sporn told the New York Jewish Week. “It must not become a pulpit for prejudice.”
Michael Scharf, who serves on the rabbinic search committee, told the Jewish Week in an emailed statement that Sporn’s comments were “disrespectful” to Schochet.
“Rabbi Schochet is a most distinguished Rabbi with a demonstrable record of great accomplishment, an incredible speaker, a true man of faith, and certainly not one who should be the subject of a smear and libelous campaign emanating from a group of nasty malcontents who obviously did not listen to Rabbi Schochet’s eloquent rejoinders to their issues,” Scharf wrote.
Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet spoke at Park East Synagogue on Sunday about the pursuit of happiness, when some synagogue members began to question him about his record on LGBTQ and Palestinian issues. (Zoom Screenshot)
The incident has prompted congregants to consider whether Schochet has the right temperament to lead a congregation that has hosted a succession of dignitaries, including Pope Benedict XVI. Critics say Schochet’s history of controversy, in addition to his response to being criticized on Sunday, do not accord with the synagogue’s self-image as a distinguished public forum.
And the drama Sunday night has raised the same question that has nagged at the synagogue for more than a year: Who is a fitting replacement for Schneier, a longtime religious freedom activist and former U.S. alternate representative at the United Nations?
Goldschmidt, who was popular among young congregants and was once seen by some as Schneier’s heir apparent, was fired in October 2021. He was subsequently derided by Schneier’s allies as lacking the education and gravitas needed to lead the synagogue. That dispute ended with Goldschmidt founding a breakaway congregation, the Altneu, which also meets on the Upper East Side and has attracted a growing membership.
“Park East has a problem where they really haven’t had a rabbi for many years,” said one member who, like several who discussed the synagogue’s internal debates, wished to remain anonymous. “We’re down on people coming on Saturday. The schools are a problem. Covid hurt us. [Rabbi Schnier] is 92, so on a day-to-day basis, he hasn’t really been involved.”
Schochet, 58, is a Chabad-affiliated rabbi who has held a number of prominent positions in British Jewish communal organizations. For three decades, he has been the rabbi of London’s Mill Hill United Synagogue, an 1,800-member Orthodox congregation in northwest London. According to a biography on the synagogue website, he has also served as the chairman of the Rabbinical Council of the United Kingdom’s United Synagogue, and as a member of the British Chief Rabbi’s cabinet.
But Schochet has also faced backlash for his comments about Palestinians and their supporters. In 2018, the British Holocaust Memorial Day Trust condemned Schochet for referring to Jews who said Kaddish for Palestinians as “kapos,” or Jews who served in positions of authority in Nazi concentration camps.
In 2015, Middle East Monitor, a pro-Palestinian media outlet, criticized Schochet for two tweets he had written four years earlier in response to a user called “Jew4Palestine.” In one, he wrote, “I have a spare Israeli flag if you want to hang yourself on it.” In the second, commenting on unemployment statistics in Gaza, he wrote, “Then again if you include terrorism as work, it’s 100% employed.” Soon afterward, Schochet was removed as a patron of a charity called Faith Matters.
At the meeting on Sunday, however, much of the criticism of Schochet revolved around his past public opposition to same-sex marriage. Jewish law has traditionally prohibited same-sex relationships, and refusing to conduct same-sex weddings remains normative practice among nearly all Orthodox rabbis.
In 2011, Schochet said that “the time-hallowed sacredness of marriage should always be preserved.” In 2012, the rabbi called gay marriage “an assault on religious values.” That same year, he penned an essay for PinkNews, an LGBTQ-focused publication, called “Homosexuality is prohibited in Orthodox Judaism but so is eating bacon, everyone is welcome.”
In 2014, England, Scotland and Wales legalized same-sex marriage. The following year, Schochet wrote that the Torah prohibits homosexual acts, but does not condemn a person for having homosexual feelings.
Schochet did not respond to a New York Jewish Week request for comment.
Sporn has posted tweets criticizing Schochet’s positions, and at the meeting on Sunday, brought up Schochet’s record of controversial statements during the question-and-answer portion of the event.
“I personally have been troubled by some of the positions you have taken in the past,” Sporn said. “You have openly fought efforts for marriage equality, while you want gay people to in your words feel reassured that they are always welcome into synagogues.”
Sporn was eventually cut off from using the microphone. Schochet responded, saying he had seen Sporn’s tweets. He said he had been invited to write an essay for PinkNews in 2012 “precisely because I was deemed as being the more moderate amongst all the Orthodox rabbis on gay issues.”
He added that the previous year, in a segment that aired on the BBC, he defended a gay couple who were denied access to a hotel room by a Christian owner. Schochet also said that a high-ranking member at his synagogue was gay.
“To everyone’s surprise, other than my own and those who know me to be a liberal conservative, I argued that everyone has a right to uphold their religious convictions without compromise,” Schochet wrote in a blog post about the BBC broadcast. “However, what you cannot do is look to impose those on others. That’s religious fundamentalism.”
In that same blog post, Schochet doubled down on his opposition to gay marriage. “If you choose to reject religion and lead a gay lifestyle, or conduct extra marital affairs, then frankly that is your business,” Schochet said. “That I choose to frown upon what you do because my G-d says it is wrong is very much my entitlement.”
Schochet then began to criticize Sporn, mentioning Sporn’s involvement in a scheme to apportion Catholic papal knighthoods for cash.
“You and I can go on canceling each other all night long,” Schochet said. “Cancel culture, which is the scourge and the malaise of our 21st century is, in the words of Barack Obama, scorched earth, partisan politics, where people we disagree with are maligned.”
(In 2019, regarding condemnations of people on social media, Obama said, “That’s not activism. That’s not bringing about change, if all you’re doing is casting stones, you’re probably not going to get that far. That’s easy to do.” A column on the Jewish website Aish.com about Obama’s comments does criticize “this scorched-earth partisan politics – where people with whom we disagree are denied a fair hearing and a voice in public life.”)
Schochet continued, “it divides families, it divides society, it tears apart relationships, it polarizes and pits people against one another. We may always be two Jews as indeed we are with three opinions, but we should always maintain one heart. I invite you to join me in that mission statement.”
When he finished, the crowd erupted into applause. The room became calm, until later, another member of the congregation, who did not use a microphone, stood up and confronted the rabbi about his exchange between him and Sporn — leading Schochet to apologize to Sporn.
“If I did embarrass you, I do genuinely apologize to you profusely and I hope you forgive me, and I mean that sincerely,” he said.
Addressing the crowd following the incident, Schneier — who has led Park East for more than 60 years — said, “When it comes to the selection of a rabbi, it is entirely up to the membership.”
“The purpose of Rabbi Schochet coming here with us, some of you did not have a chance to to hear him, to meet with him, and now I hope you get to know him a bit better,” Schneier said. “All kinds of rumors, forget about them.”
Schochet’s reaction to Sporn was “a personal attack,” the member who wished to remain anonymous said. He added that Schochet’s conduct did not reflect the decorum the synagogue strives to maintain.
“He ganged [the crowd] up in a mob mentality where they cheered for him,” the member told the Jewish Week. “Instead of answering the question, he attacked him. [Schochet] had such a great opportunity to be diplomatic. This guy is not diplomatic on an interview. Could you imagine if he had a contract? This is almost beyond belief.”
This member also said that Schochet is the only rabbi who has been brought to the synagogue by the search committee.
Another synagogue member told the Jewish Week that Sporn’s tweets attacking Schochet provided critical context for their exchange.
“It did not come across to me as embarrassing to Kalman,” the member said. “It came across to me as Rabbi Schochet saying that what you’re doing is being unfair.”
He added that what is getting lost amidst the squabble is that Park East “is looking for a rabbi.”
“Every member should have the opportunity to come and ask questions,” the member said. “The sense I had from people is that they got a really good understanding of where Rabbi Schochet stands on the issues. Yes, Kalman brought up an issue, and Rabbi Schochet apologized.”
That member said no decisions have been made thus far as to who will be hired.
Meanwhile, Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt, the wife of Benjamin Goldschmidt, told the New York Jewish Week that the new synagogue they started is “only growing” and that she hasn’t followed developments at her husband’s old congregation.
“I really don’t have anything to do with that place,” Goldschmidt said of Park East Synagogue. “We have moved on.”
—
The post The quest to replace Park East Synagogue’s 92-year-old rabbi is not going smoothly appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Antisemitic AI Videos Target Children With Disney-Pixar Style to Push Holocaust Denial, Report Shows
AI-generated videos found on TikTok, Meta, YouTube, and X imitated popular animation styles from Disney-Pixar movies to present Holocaust denial and antisemitic tropes to children. The image of a child second from the left is from a trailer depicting Jewish children in a concentration camp during World War II. Photos: Screenshot collage from CyberWell report.
A pathbreaking report released this week reveals that online users have started exploiting AI video generators to weaponize the nostalgia of Disney-Pixar styles, wrapping venomous hate in a candy-coated shell to reach youth.
On Sunday, CyberWell, a Tel Aviv-based nonprofit focused on monitoring antisemitism on social media, published research tracking 307 identified pieces of AI-generated content targeting Jews on social media between January 2025 and February 2026. The group found that the images and videos received 30 million views and more than 2.8 million user interactions such as likes or reshares. They observed animations created with OpenAI’s Sora, Google’s Veo, X’s Grok, and Suno.
While TikTok accounted for the biggest chunk of the content at almost 36 percent, the popular video-sharing service also came through with the highest level of enforcement at more than 88 percent. Instagram drove the top rates of engagement, accounting for almost 65 percent while its total antisemitic posts reached nearly 25 percent.
The Meta platform saw a removal rate of 67 percent, notably higher than Alphabet’s YouTube (28 percent) and billionaire Elon Musk’s X platform (20 percent). Musk recently incorporated X, xAI, and its Grok chatbot into his rocket company SpaceX before an anticipated IPO in June.
CyberWell found three primary narratives across the videos: 33.2 percent portrayed Jews as greedy or money-obsessed, 21.5 percent involved the Holocaust, and 21.2 percent presented violent rhetoric against Jews inspired by a specific event, in this case the June 2025 Israel-Iran conflict and the viral video “Boom, Boom, Tel Aviv.” The video features such lyrics as “Boom, boom, Tel Aviv. This is what you get for all your evil deeds […] You brought this upon yourself, it’s your time to bleed […] Humanity never expected good behavior from you Jews.”
The researchers called mid-2025 a turning point in the rise of AI-driven antisemitic videos, with 98.4 percent of identified content originating from that point forward.
The report describes “a recurring pattern in which users package AI-generated antisemitic content in formats designed to appeal to younger audiences. The most common examples include fabricated Disney-Pixar-style movie trailers and gaming-related audio clips that promote Holocaust-related mockery, antisemitic conspiracy theories, and hate speech targeting Jews.”
One of the techniques users attempt to evade moderation is to label such videos with tags claiming “satire” and “dark humor.” Others will use the term “Caust” instead of “Holocaust.”
One example presented features a fabricated trailer for a “Caust” movie created with Sora in the Pixar style. Researchers described how “set in a concentration camp, the trailer portrays Adolf Hitler in a lighthearted manner while following a group of Jewish child prisoners attempting a dramatic escape. By presenting the Holocaust in a playful, animated format, the video turns atrocity into entertainment and diminishes the gravity of Jewish suffering.”
The AI videos also exploit kids’ love for video games.
One TikTok video created with Sora and titled “CAUST COMMANDER” received 66,500 views, 4,623 likes, and 3,619 reposts. According to the report, “the post portrays Adolf Hitler in a playful, stylized manner while depicting him killing those around him. The video makes light of the Holocaust and the mechanisms used to exterminate Jews by presenting them in a gamified, commercialized format, including the promotion of fake merchandise such as Zyklon B gas, themed outfits, and ‘back bling.’”
On March 24, OpenAI announced the decision to shut down Sora following months of reporting on antisemitic content proliferating across the platform. Analysts judged that the decision was reportedly motivated by a need to free up computational power for the training of new models so OpenAI could remain competitive as Anthropic’s Claude surges in popularity among coders and Alphabet’s Gemini draws away users.
The report emphasizes the deep extent to which antisemitism has penetrated AI systems.
“Many of the websites used in AI training datasets function as active hubs for antisemitic discourse, raising concerns about their inclusion in model development,” the report says. “For example, Reddit ranks among the most cited domains across major AI systems, while analyses of ChatGPT outputs indicate that Wikipedia alone contributes to roughly half of generated responses. The reliance of AI companies on these websites underscores the risk that antisemitic narratives circulating online may become embedded in model inputs and later disseminated at scale.”
CyberWell CEO and founder Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor warned that AI had turbo-charged both the speed and intensity of online antisemitism.
“Artificial intelligence has fundamentally changed the scale and speed at which antisemitism can be produced and distributed online,” Cohen Montemayor said. “Generative AI now allows bad actors to industrialize hate, producing high-impact content that can reach millions, with enforcement often coming only after it has already been widely amplified.”
Cohen Montemayor added that CyberWell’s latest report “examining the circulation of antisemitic AI-generated content on major platforms provides critical insights for how social media platforms can take on the abuse of generative AI tools to spread antisemitism in the digital universe.”
CyberWell found that while the Pixar-fied, disarming aesthetics targeted children, it was the videos openly glorifying violence that provoked the highest level of shares reaching 33 percent of content but 41 percent of engagement.
Cohen Montemayor called for the platforms to “move beyond disclosure and invest in systems that identify harmful narratives at scale, including those embedded in audio, visuals and coded formats that evade traditional detection.”
Warning that AI was “being weaponized at scale,” Cohen Montemayor explained that “by strengthening automated detection, investing in competent and transparent human moderation, auditing training data and partnering with specialized external stakeholders, platforms and AI developers can address the complex and fast-evolving forms of online hate through sustained collaboration between technology companies, policymakers and expert partners.”
In one of the most closely watched legal battles in artificial intelligence, a jury on Monday ruled against Musk in a lawsuit the billionaire filed to force OpenAI to revert fully to its original nonprofit mission. Jurors decided that Musk had filed his suit too late.
The world’s wealthiest man faces potentially more severe legal challenges in response to his AI business in France, where prosecutors said they intended to pursue criminal charges due to the Grok chatbot’s promotion of Holocaust denial and generation of child sexual abuse images.
Uncategorized
Yeshiva University Holds Conference Calling for ‘Social Science’ Study of Rising Antisemitism
A graduate wears a Star of David on her graduation mortarboard during the commencement ceremony for Yeshiva University in New York City, US, May 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Andrew Kelly
Vital new data, scholarship, and moral encouragement were exchanged during a national conference Yeshiva University held earlier this month to promote the study of antisemitism as a “social science problem,” several academics who attended the event told The Algemeiner in exclusive interviews.
The “Antisemitism Conference” brought some 200 academics to the institution’s campus in Manhattan, New York amid a moment many Jewish community advocates have described as a “crisis” of antisemitism. Across the US, Jews have faced discrimination, battery, and even death over their Jewish identity and for being Zionists. Having seen the situation plunge to unprecedented lows, Yeshiva University called on scholars from a range of fields to use their expertise to explore and report on the matter.
Following the conference, Raeefa Shams of the Academic Engagement Network (AEN) told The Algemeiner that the academic community was responsive and arrived at the event with a harvest of findings and insight.
“They presented research they are in the process of conducting or in the process of publishing,” Shams said. “For example, we had one faculty member who presented on the correlation between anti-Israel attitudes and conspiratorial, antisemitic thinking. There was another scholar who presented on the experience of Jewish students with antisemitism post-Oct. 7. We had somebody else present about antisemitism within the American Psychological Association. We had a clinical psychologist talk about antisemitism and traumatic invalidation.”
The Algemeiner has covered a wide range of antisemitic incidents which transpired on the streets and campuses of the US since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel unleashed a spike in global antisemitism. These included, among many other examples, a public-school principal inveighing against “Jew money,” an attempted arson at the Hillel International chapter in San Francisco, California, and the movement of some conservative students into the far-right ecosystem of antisemitism. In New York City, home to the world’s largest Jewish population outside of Israel, Jews have been targeted in the majority of all hate crimes this year despite comprising a small fraction of the total population.
The wave of hatred has changed how American Jews perceive their status in the US. According to the results of a previous survey commissioned by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Jewish Federations of North America, a striking 57 percent of American Jews believe “that antisemitism is now a normal Jewish experience.”
Higher education can lead the way in reversing this trend if it promotes the adoption of “trauma informed” policies, clinical psychologist Dr. Mari Bal-Halpern, told The Algemeiner.
“There needs to be a safe environment. That does not mean that we’re silencing voices, but it needs to be safe for everybody,” Bal-Halpern said, “We know how to do that; there are guidelines for how. Most universities say they are, but are they really following those guidelines? I doubt it.”
Antisemitic incidents in the US decreased overall in 2025, but violent attacks targeting American Jews remained at alarmingly high levels, according to the ADL’s latest Annual audit report. While antisemitic assaults increased by just 4 percent, from 196 in 2024 to 203 in 2025, perpetrators increased their use of “deadly” weapons by nearly 40 percent, the ADL said. Incidents of assault involving a deadly weapon increased to 32 in 2025 from 23 in 2024.
The advocacy group noted that the upward shift was reflected in the shocking murders of Jews in antisemitic attacks in the US for the first time since 2019. Two Israeli embassy staffers — a young couple set be engaged — were shot dead in Washington, DC last May, and weeks later a firebombing in Colorado claimed the life of an octogenarian. In both crimes, the alleged killers cited anti-Zionism as their motivating ideology.
Yeshiva University’s “Antisemitism Conference” was the first step toward amassing even more empirical data on this subject, another conference participant said.
“For all of us who are embarking on this area of research and investigation, we’re all dealing with this very large, amorphous, difficult to fully understand but very disturbing phenomena of rising antisemitism or rising anti-Israelism to the extent that there is a connection between them,” said Rutgers University psychology professor Dr. Kent Harber. “We’re trying to get some sense of the dimension and facets of it for our individual work.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
Uncategorized
Thomas Massie, Leading Anti-Israel Republican, Faces Trump-Backed Challenger on Primary Day in Kentucky
US Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) leaves a meeting of the House Republican Conference in the US Capitol on Wednesday, June 4, 2025. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
The heated Republican primary battle in Kentucky between incumbent Rep. Thomas Massie and Trump-backed challenger Ed Gallrein is set to come to a close on Tuesday in what has become one of the most closely watched congressional fights in the US, one which could have seismic ramifications for the future of the Republican Party’s relationship with Israel.
The race, now considered the most expensive House primary in US history, has evolved far beyond a local Kentucky contest. Instead, it has become a national referendum on the direction of the Republican Party under US President Donald Trump, the limits of ideological dissent within the GOP, and the growing divide between traditional pro-Israel conservatives and a rising faction of right-wing isolationists skeptical of American support for the Jewish state, Washington’s closest ally in the Middle East.
Though Massie was expected to cruise to reelection in the ruby-red Kentucky district, his quest to secure his seat has been made far more daunting after Trump made defeating Massie a personal political mission. Trump, accusing Massie of siding with Democrats to block his agenda and demoralizing the Republican base, has endorsed Gallrein, a retired Navy SEAL officer and spent months pummeling the incumbent with a barrage of public insults.
In a May 18 social media post, Trump lambasted Massie as “the worst congressman in the history of our country.”
“I’m in the Oval Office, and we’re in a fight with the worst congressman in the history of our country,” Trump said on Truth Social. “His name is Thomas Massie, he’s from Kentucky and I hope you’re going to put him out of business tomorrow, he is so bad.”
The Kentucky congressman, a libertarian-leaning conservative long known for opposing federal spending and challenging Republican leadership, broke sharply with Trump over several major issues in recent months, including Iran policy, foreign aid, and the administration’s posture toward Israel during escalating regional tensions in the Middle East.
Though Massie maintains an extensive history of voting down foreign aid to virtually every country, not just Israel, his sharp criticisms toward the Jewish state and its supporters have drawn the ire of many GOP voters. Massie has accused the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the premier pro-Israel lobbying group in the US, of deploying “babysitters” to monitor and police the votes of lawmakers and prevent dissent around issues regarding Israel and the Middle East. He has also accused Israel of targeting civilian infrastructure in its military campaigns, omitting that terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah repurpose these locations to store munitions or launch missiles.
Recently, Massie drew backlash from Jewish groups after he posed for a photo with an individual wearing a shirt emblazoned with the phrase “American Reich,” a direct reference to the Nazi regime. Massie has not commented on the incident or distanced himself from the individual.
Massie has also come under fire over an advertisement released by a pro-Massie super PAC targeting billionaire Republican donor Paul Singer, a prominent Jewish supporter of pro-Israel causes who has backed efforts to defeat the incumbent.
The ad characterizes Singer as a “pro-trans billionaire” and features a rainbow-colored Star of David behind his image while attacking Gallrein’s allies.
Massie’s criticism of US support for Israel and his resistance to interventionist foreign policy drew fierce backlash from pro-Israel organizations and Republican donors, many of whom quickly consolidated behind Gallrein, a relatively unknown Kentucky Republican who has embraced Trump’s America First movement while simultaneously affirming strong support for Israel and the US-Israel alliance. The attempt to unseat Massie has attracted roughly $19 million in outside spending, with pro-Israel advocacy groups, MAGA-aligned organizations, and conservative super PACs flooding Kentucky airwaves with ads portraying the Kentucky firebrand as increasingly out of step with Republican voters.
For many pro-Israel Republicans, the race represents an early test of whether the GOP will tolerate lawmakers who oppose robust American backing for Israel during a period of heightened regional instability. The race also comes at a time in which antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment have become points of contention within the GOP. Though older Republican voters continue to support Israel in substantial numbers, a growing number of polls indicate that younger Republican voters are far more skeptical of the US-Israel alliance, with many wanting to end aid to Israel and cease foreign military campaigns.
Massie has argued that his foreign policy views reflect constitutional conservatism and opposition to “forever wars.” But critics inside the Republican Party say his approach increasingly mirrors the isolationist wing of the American right that seeks to reduce US commitments abroad, including support for Israel.
Gallrein, by contrast, has framed the election as a battle for peace through strength, aligning himself closely with Trump’s aggressive posture toward Iran and emphasizing unwavering support for Israel’s security.
The primary also carries broader implications for Trump’s continued dominance over the Republican Party. Unlike many previous Trump critics who came from the GOP’s moderate wing, Massie is a staunch conservative with strong grassroots credibility among libertarians and Tea Party voters.
Though the race is expected to be very close, Gallrein has amassed substantial momentum in the closing stretch of the competition. A recent poll showed Gallrein leading Massie 53 percent to 45 percent among likely GOP voters in the state’s 4th Congressional District.
A Massie defeat would likely send a powerful message to Republicans nationwide that opposition to Trump — particularly on foreign policy and Israel — carries enormous political risk, even for deeply conservative incumbents.
A victory for Massie, however, could embolden a small but growing bloc of right-wing lawmakers skeptical of foreign intervention and willing to publicly challenge both Trump and the GOP’s traditionally hawkish pro-Israel establishment.
With polling tightening in recent days and turnout expected to be high, political observers across Washington, Jerusalem, and conservative media circles are watching Kentucky closely.