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Things are only going to get worse for Jews from here
I spent last week compiling a summary of news from the past year for the American Jewish Year Book, an annual project that allowed me to zoom out on 2025 — and the results are bleak.
Even as my reporting has often uncovered evidence that the most doomer takes on contemporary antisemitism are wrong, key signals are pointing toward things getting worse for Jews, and antisemitic attitudes growing with few checks.
The country’s largest Jewish advocacy groups are downplaying its rise on the right, afraid of appearing partisan and damaging ties with the Trump administration. At the same time, the Jewish establishment — the Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Federations of North America, the Conference of Presidents and other big institutional players — refuses to acknowledge any distinction between Jewish identity and Zionism, making it difficult to influence the growing share of Americans whose political turn against Israel sometimes slips into antisemitism.
Progressives, meanwhile, tend to view antisemitism as a secondary or tertiary issue — if not a complete distraction from their priorities. And their work on antisemitism is often stymied by an inability to understand the complex relationship that most American Jews have with Israel.
So despite Jewish organizations’ massive investment in combating antisemitism — and huge levels of concern among Jews — there are shockingly few meaningful checks on growing antisemitic sentiment across the political spectrum, and little indication that such checks will emerge in the near future.
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The antisemitic turn on the right has not been subtle. President Donald Trump has repeatedly accused American Jews of disloyalty, and his administration is stocked with high-level appointees who have either espoused antisemitism — Elon Musk thinks Jews are destroying Western civilization, Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson believes Leo Frank was guilty of the crimes he was lynched for and White House official Paul Ingrassia has a self-professed “Nazi streak” — or fraternized with avowed antisemites, like FBI director Kash Patel’s repeated appearances on a podcast whose host called for the mass deportation of Jews.
Prominent Trump supporters in the media — like Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan and Theo Von — have either made antisemitic comments or brought on offensive guests.
And data has consistently shown that conservatives hold the most openly offensive views about Jews, and anecdotes suggesting the same continue to pile up. At a recent roundtable of young conservatives hosted by the Manhattan Institute, three of the four responses to the question “What do you think of Jewish people?” included: “They’ve got Hollywood on lock,” “Don’t they own, like, a ton of the media, and, like, just kind of everything?”; and, “I would say a force for evil.”
Yet none of the country’s largest Jewish advocacy groups have directed their energy at addressing conservative antisemitism or the Trump administration’s tolerance of at least certain forms of antisemitism.
Instead, Eric Fingerhut, chief of the Jewish Federations of North America, cautioned his network’s members against signing an April statement criticizing the Trump administration’s approach to antisemitism and urged synagogues to apply for federal security funding, even though it appeared to prohibit them from engaging in diversity work. When asked about Patel, the FBI director who cozied up to an antisemitic podcaster, Fingerhut called on Congress to significantly boost his budget.
I don’t mean to single out Fingerhut — his approach is the same as almost every other major Jewish establishment figure; most have spent the past year focused on opposing progressive groups like teachers unions, student protesters and politicians like Zohran Mamdani.
Paradoxically, focusing on criticizing the left rather than the right helps avoid allegations of partisanship because the Democratic Party and major Jewish leaders are often aligned on Israel. It’s not viewed as an attack on the Democrats for Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL chief, to compare student protesters to ISIS terrorists; President Joe Biden basically agreed with Greenblatt that the demonstrators were antisemitic, even if he used more restrained language. Kamala Harris refused to allow a Palestinian speaker at last year’s Democratic convention and the party’s top brass dragged their feet or outright refused to endorse Mamdani in the New York City mayor’s race.
Trump, on the other hand, has steadfastly refused to condemn his movement’s antisemitic wing. Carlson delivered a keynote address at the Republican convention last summer and Trump defended him after he interviewed Nick Fuentes, a notorious Holocaust denier. And Vice President JD Vance has dismissed examples of overt antisemitism on the right as “edgy, offensive jokes.”
This dynamic makes a full frontal assault on the antisemitic elements of the right much more fraught for Jewish groups that want to maintain a working relationship with the Trump administration.
And they do want to maintain that relationship — in large part because the current administration is aligned with the Jewish establishment in going after the anti-Zionist left.
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On the other side of the political spectrum, I’ve seen two problematic tendencies increase over the past year.
The first is that Jews are often thought of as a privileged group. This can minimize concern about antisemitism. (“Sure, it’s bad, but not as bad as other forms of discrimination.”) Or it can fuel suspicion that claims of antisemitism are just a smokescreen for the powerful elite to shield themselves from criticism.
The second factor is a misunderstanding of the Jewish relationship to Israel. Some wrongly assume Jews all support Israel, conflating Jewishness with the Zionism they oppose. Others wrongly insist Israel has nothing to do with Jewishness, making it OK to demonize every Jewish person who refuses to unequivocally denounce Israel’s existence.
These combine to create a perilous climate for Jews, fueling animus toward Jewish targets with only the faintest connection to the Israeli state’s actions in Gaza — a student dinner hosted by Baruch College’s Hillel, a Minneapolis synagogue on the anniversary of Oct. 7, a Cincinnati rabbi slated to speak at an anti-Nazi rally before organizers determined that his liberal Zionism made him a “white supremacist.” These are only a few examples among many small indignities experienced on college campuses and in workplaces by Jews with even slightly complicated views about Israel.
The porous boundary between opposition to Israel and antisemitism is especially stark online. “It was promised to them 3,000 years ago” — a meme originally poking fun at the ancestral Jewish claim to modern Israel — has transformed into a way to mock supposed Jewish entitlement, disconnected from any political valence. (“A video of Jewish content creators joking about bringing free shampoo home from a hotel?” my colleague Mira Fox explained over the summer, “well, they must think those toiletries were promised to them 3,000 years ago.”)
When Jews raise concerns about this rhetoric, the response is often a mix of the factors I mentioned above: A little antisemitism is no big deal because Jews aren’t oppressed, or it’s not antisemitic because it’s only a dig at Zionists. And, in cases where the vitriol is aimed at Jews that have nothing to do with Israel, well, they’re probably Zionists.
Some young leaders on the far-right, including Fuentes, have sought to join criticism of Israel with explicit antisemitism. But, in contrast, young progressives driving the political turn away from Israel remain less likely to agree with classic antisemitic tropes than conservatives, and more likely to say antisemitism is a problem for society.
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This should make them a relatively easy audience to reach.
But rather than wage a battle for the hearts and minds of these progressives, the largest Jewish organizations have opted for blunt force. They’ve joined with the Trump administration to pressure universities to arrest, expel and, in some cases, deport student protesters, and implement strict new rules for demonstrations. And they’ve sought to legislate definitions of antisemitism that include criticism toward Israel, while outlawing school curriculum that they believe is biased.
Some of these policies may be sound. But, with perhaps the sole exception of Robert Kraft’s quixotic public service announcements about antisemitism — one features Shaquille O’Neal calling for a “timeout on hate” — none of these efforts focus on convincing people to change their minds about Jews.
Instead, they effectively aim to outlaw or restrict expression of negative views toward Israel, leaving whatever harmful beliefs about Jews that might be tied to those positions to fester in silence.
There are a variety of projects that seek to explain, first of all, why progressives should care about antisemitism and, second, how to critique Israel without slipping into antisemitism, including The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere, Safety Through Solidarity and PARCEO training.
But these efforts receive little funding. Amid the hundreds of millions of dollars that philanthropists are throwing at countering antisemitism, why are projects made by and for progressives left out?
The reason, I suspect, is that the Jewish establishment is not interested in teaching people how to oppose the existence of a Jewish state in Israel without engaging in antisemitism. To them, opposition to Zionism is itself antisemitism, which erodes their credibility with anti-Zionists who genuinely want to avoid antisemitism.
Nobody is going to listen to a Jewish organization that says, “Your political ideology is always going to be antisemitic — and I’m going to try to get your school to expel you for promoting it — but in the meantime could you please try to be careful about using these slogans because they make some of your Jewish peers feel uncomfortable?”
This approach has convinced some progressives that “antisemitism” just means criticism of Israel — in part because prominent Jewish leaders describe it this way — rather than a genuine form of bigotry.
Ostracizing Israel’s harshest critics might have worked when anti-Zionism was a fringe belief. But the aftermath of Oct. 7 heralded a near-consensus among liberals, including many Jews, that Israel is a villain on the world stage. Attempting to simply ban people from expressing these views — or taking away their phones — is not going to help address the antisemitism that can get mixed in with animus toward Israel.
The good news is that things are still not as bad as some would have you believe. Mamdani, who became a fixation for many Jewish leaders during the race for mayor, has been remarkably conciliatory to the Jewish establishment, modeling a version of anti-Zionism that mostly avoids some of the pitfalls I’ve outlined. And Jews still have a place in the mainstream conservative movement, which has directed most of its ire toward other minorities — after all, it was Somali immigrants, not Jews, who Trump recently referred to as “garbage.”
For now, this explosion of antisemitism remains mostly — though, tragically, not entirely — confined to feelings of social alienation rather than violence or systemic discrimination.
But that only buys time to find meaningful remedies that, to date, have been few and far between.
The post Things are only going to get worse for Jews from here appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump Says He Is Likely to Reject Peace Proposal as Iran Has ‘Not Yet Paid a Big Enough Price’
Ships and boats in the Strait of Hormuz, Musandam, Oman. Photo: May 1, 2026. REUTERS/Stringer
US President Donald Trump said that he had yet to review the exact wording of a new Iranian peace proposal but he was unlikely to accept it, because the Iranians had not yet “paid a big enough price.”
Trump’s remarks on social media concluded a day in which he publicly mused about the possibility of restarting airstrikes, the latest mixed signal as he seeks to end the war he launched more than two months ago.
On Sunday, Israel ordered thousands of Lebanese to leave villages in southern Lebanon, an escalation of a war between Israel and Iran’s Hezbollah allies that has run in parallel to the Iran war and could further complicate wider peace efforts.
Iran has said talks with Washington cannot resume unless a ceasefire also holds in Lebanon, which Israel invaded in March to attack Hezbollah after the Iranian-backed Lebanese group fired across the border in support of Tehran.
Lebanon and Israel agreed to a separate truce last month, but fighting has continued, though on a smaller scale. The Israeli military issued an urgent warning on Sunday to residents of 11 towns and villages in Lebanon’s south, urging them to evacuate their homes and move at least 3,300 feet away to open areas.
The military said it was conducting operations against Hezbollah following what it described as a violation of the ceasefire, warning that anyone near Hezbollah fighters or facilities could be at risk.
PEACE APPEARS NO CLOSER
The United States and Israel suspended their bombing campaign against Iran four weeks ago, but appear no closer to a deal to end a war that has caused the biggest disruption ever to global energy supplies, roiled global markets and raised worries about the possibility of a wider global economic downturn.
In his post on social media, Trump wrote: “I will soon be reviewing the plan that Iran has just sent to us, but can’t imagine that it would be acceptable in that they have not yet paid a big enough price for what they have done to Humanity, and the World, over the last 47 years.”
On Saturday, a senior Iranian official had said Iran’s proposal would first open shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and end a US blockade of Iran, while leaving talks on Iran’s nuclear program for later.
Though Trump had already said on Friday that he was not satisfied with the Iranian proposal, he said on Saturday he had yet to hear all the details.
“They told me about the concept of the deal. They’re going to give me the exact wording now,” he said. Asked if he might restart strikes on Iran, Trump replied: “I don’t want to say that. I mean, I can’t tell that to a reporter. If they misbehave, if they do something bad, right now we’ll see. But it’s a possibility that could happen.”
IRAN’S PROPOSAL APPEARS TO CONTRADICT WASHINGTON’S DEMANDS
Iran’s proposal to delay talks on nuclear issues until later appears to contradict Washington’s repeated demand that Iran give up its stockpile of more than 400 kg (900 pounds) of highly enriched uranium as a condition to end the war.
Washington says the uranium could be used to make a bomb. Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful but it is willing to discuss curbs on it in return for the lifting of sanctions, as it accepted in a 2015 deal that Trump abandoned.
Reuters and other news organizations have reported over the past week that Tehran was proposing to reopen the strait before nuclear issues were resolved. The senior Iranian official confirmed that this new timeline had now been spelled out in a formal proposal conveyed to the United States through mediators.
While saying repeatedly he is in no hurry, Trump is under domestic pressure to break Iran’s hold on the strait, which has choked off 20% of the world’s oil and gas supplies and pushed up US gasoline prices. Trump’s Republican Party faces the risk of a voter backlash over higher prices when the country votes in midterm congressional elections in November.
Iranian media said Tehran’s 14-point proposal included the withdrawal of US forces from areas surrounding Iran, lifting the blockade, releasing Iran’s frozen assets, payment of compensation, lifting sanctions and ending the war on all fronts, including Lebanon, as well as a new control mechanism for the strait.
Iran has been blocking nearly all shipping from the Gulf apart from its own for more than two months. Last month, the US imposed its own blockade of ships from Iranian ports.
Speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential diplomacy, the senior Iranian official said Tehran believed its latest proposal to shelve nuclear talks for a later stage was a significant shift aimed at facilitating an agreement.
“Under this framework, negotiations over the more complicated nuclear issue have been moved to the final stage to create a more conducive atmosphere,” the official said.
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Most Jewish voters rate Mamdani poorly, new poll finds
As New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani marks four months in office, a new survey of New York City’s Jewish voters suggests he has done little to ease concerns among a community that overwhelmingly did not support his election and remains uneasy about his handling of antisemitism and Israel.
A Mercury Public Affairs poll of 665 Jewish voters who cast ballots in last year’s mayoral election found that 58% rate his performance as “poor” or “fair,” compared to 32% who say “excellent” or “good.” Among the 18% who described his performance as “fair,” a majority — 56% — said they disapprove, while 24% approve.
The poll sponsored by The Jewish Majority, an advocacy group led by AIPAC veteran Jonathan Schulman, was conducted from Feb. 17 to 28 in English and Yiddish via landline and cell phone. The sample has a reported margin of error of plus or minus 3.7%. It included a diverse cross-section of the city’s Jewish electorate: 30% Orthodox; 32% Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist; and 20% unaffiliated.
The results published Sunday underscore a political reality that has shadowed Mamdani since taking the helm of the city that is home to the largest concentration of Jews in the U.S. He won just 26% of the Jewish vote in the 2025 election, compared to 55% for Andrew Cuomo and 8% for Curtis Sliwa, according to the poll. His support was strongest among younger voters ages 35-44 (34%) and unaffiliated Jews (42%). He drew just 7% among Orthodox voters.
Antisemitism and Israel loom large
A central tension in Mamdani’s relationship with Jewish groups has been his effort to separate his views critical of Israel from his repeated commitment to protect Jewish New Yorkers.
Mamdani, who rose to power aligned with pro-Palestinian activism, has so far declined calls from Jewish leaders to acknowledge the community’s connection to Israel more directly. That comes into sharper focus now as the Jewish community marks Jewish American Heritage Month. Mamdani is not expected to march in the annual Celebrate Israel Parade on Fifth Avenue on May 31, a choice likely to reinforce perceptions of that distance. This year’s parade theme is “Proud Americans, Proud Zionists.”
Last month, Mamdani vetoed a City Council bill requiring safety plans for protests near schools, while allowing a separate measure protecting houses of worship to become law. Mamdani said he shared concerns raised by progressive groups and labor unions that the legislation could impact their ability to organize and potentially limit demonstrations, particularly on campuses. He also faced backlash from Zionist Jewish organizations on his first day in office after revoking executive orders tied to antisemitism and campus protests.
At the time the poll was taken, an overwhelming 84% of respondents said they had supported the Council’s initial proposal to establish a safe perimeter around houses of worship to prevent harassment and intimidation, while preserving First Amendment rights. Only 7% opposed it.
According to the survey, 82% of respondents said they are concerned about the rise in antisemitism in New York City, and 58% said they believe the increase is linked to the normalization of anti-Zionism.
A majority — 61% — said Mamdani’s refusal to outright condemn the slogan “globalize the Intifada” has emboldened pro-Hamas protesters. Nineteen percent disagreed.
Mamdani stands firm
The Jewish Majority spearheaded an open letter during the mayoral election, signed by more than 1,100 Jewish congregational leaders opposing what it described as “rising anti-Zionism and its political normalization” among figures like Mamdani.
Four months in, Mamdani is showing little sign of changing course, sticking with the coalition that brought him to power even as many Jewish New Yorkers say their concerns remain unresolved.
“I am deeply committed to protecting Jewish New Yorkers,” Mamdani told the Forward last week. “It’s part of a commitment to ensure that public safety is delivered for each and every New Yorker. And I also believe that as we deliver that public safety, as we show an absolute rejection of antisemitism across the five boroughs, we can also do these things while protecting our fundamental constitutional rights.”
The post Most Jewish voters rate Mamdani poorly, new poll finds appeared first on The Forward.
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After a Maryland teacher’s death, her 200-piece Judaica collection finds new life in a Jewish museum
(JTA) — As Rae Ann Kaylie sat on her mother’s couch in the wake of her death, the Judaica felt overwhelming.
Over 50 menorahs adorned the shelves. A dozen seder plates had been meticulously hung alongside a trove of Jewish art on each wall. And countless dreidels, kiddush cups and shofars filled every corner of the 1,100-square-foot home in Rockville, Maryland.
There were so many hamsas hanging near the entrance, Kaylie joked, “Whoa, Mom, what on earth? Like, how much evil eye do we have in here?”
For 35 years, Kaylie’s mother, Deborah Brodie, had amassed a collection of over 200 Jewish ritual objects, which she had used as a hands-on classroom for her Hebrew school students with special needs. Among the collection, Brodie had also obtained a Torah from Ebay, which her students used to practice for their b’nai mitzvah.
“She wasn’t the one who was like, ‘Oh, don’t touch it. You’re going to break it,’” Kaylie said. “She was like, ‘Touch it, here, take a bunch,’ you know what I mean, and that was really cool about her entire collection.”
Brodie — known as “Bubbie Cookie” to her family — had not built the collection alone. Her longtime partner, Jay Brill, whom she met through a Washington Jewish Week personals ad in 1986, was alongside her throughout the journey, traveling with her to all 50 states to sell Jewish jewelry and a computerized Hebrew-learning program they created together.
Over the years, the couple attended both B’nai Shalom and Shaare Tefila Congregation, two Conservative synagogues in Olney, Maryland. Toward the end of their lives, they attended Chabad of Olney, whose rabbi officiated their funerals.
But after Brodie, 76, and Brill, 74, died in February just 19 days apart, Kaylie said she and her family were faced with a painful question: What would happen to the couple’s lifetime of Jewish devotion in their absence?
“We all picked something we wanted, but then, you know, you don’t want to sell it, you don’t want to make any money off of it,” Kaylie said. “It was just trying to figure out, like, what can we do to further her passion, her vision?”
The answer, Kaylie said, arrived through Instagram.
Earlier this month, Kaylie sent a simple message to Nick Fox, who operates a social media series titled “Millennial Inheritance,” writing, “Hey, you want to see a lot of menorahs?”
Since October, Fox has documented dozens of inheritance stories across his social media channels, featuring people grappling with their late parents’ vast collections of Breyer Horse figurines, salt and pepper shakers and Christmas decorations.
But while Fox said the mission of his page is not necessarily to help people find homes for inherited collections, Kaylie’s story felt different.
As he viewed images of Brodie and Brill’s home, Fox, who is Catholic, said that he immediately flashed back to childhood memories attending his classmates’ bar mitzvahs and receiving souvenir hamsas from their trips to Israel.
“It was the fact that she was actively grieving and really had no idea what to do, and I think the fact that I was raised how I was, where I was, that I had a knowledge of what this stuff was and what it meant,” Fox said.
Just days later, Fox posted a short video for his 200,000 followers featuring snippets of the sprawling collection along with a call to help find it a permanent home that would “love it the way Rae Ann’s mom did.”
As the post garnered hundreds of comments offering ideas for the collection’s future and tributes to Brodie’s contributions to Jewish education, it was also making its way through Washington’s Jewish community.
The morning after the post, Jonathan Edelman, the collections curator for the Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum, said he woke up to dozens of messages from people urging the museum to find a home for the collection.
“It was so meaningful that so many people in the broader community, and who have never stopped in our museum, tagged us and said, you know, this should be the home of this sort of wild story and this amazing collection,” Edelman said.
By the following weekend, Edelman had travelled to Brodie’s home to meet with Rae Ann to view the collection himself. But even after seeing Fox’s post, Edelman said he was unprepared for what awaited him inside.
“It was incredible, floor-to-ceiling Judaica like I’d never seen in anyone’s home before,” Edelman said. “It wasn’t just thrown on a shelf. It was so thoughtfully laid out. I mean, she had seder plates and hanukkiot hanging on the wall, which is no easy task to do…it felt like a museum quality display. It was really impressive.”
Edelman quickly reported back to the museum, which opened in June 2023, telling them that he believed he had stumbled upon an “incredible opportunity” to launch its inaugural education collection.
Now, the Capital Jewish Museum has plans to house the entirety of Brodie and Brill’s collection in its second-floor education and program space, the Community Action Lab, where visitors will be able to interact with the Judaica firsthand, just as Brodie encouraged her students to do in her home.
The museum also plans to photograph the collection so it is accessible online, and lend individual pieces to schools and organizations in the area for educational use.
“When I heard her mother’s story, you know, we were doing the same thing. Our goal was Jewish education, and she did it as an individual, we’re doing it as an institution,” Edelman said. “It means so much for us to honor her mother’s memory by doing the work that she dedicated her life to…it feels particularly special.”
But while Fox said he was not surprised by the outpouring of support and suggestions from the Jewish community, he said other Jews that inherit large quantities of Judaica should not look to Kaylie’s story as a roadmap.
“This is absolute best-case scenario, but it also makes it so very unique, because there aren’t going to be a lot of collections that museums usually are going to take on,” Fox said, adding that people should not assume that inheritances will find a place in a museum.
Instead, Fox said he encouraged people that inherit Jewish collections to consult their local Jewish community centers or synagogues to see if they might have a use for them.
“In the case of someone having a tremendous amount of Judaica, I think the best way would be to tap into your network, first, talk to people that you know that are in your community,” Fox said. “And then if it goes nowhere, then you have every right to, you know, if you’re looking to sell it, or if you’re looking to donate it, I think the big ask would be, what would your relatives want done with that stuff?”
Rachel Steinhardt, a California resident who organized a large-scale Judaica drive for people impacted by the Palisades and Eaton fires last year, recommended that people who find themselves with inherited Judaica they cannot keep turn to local Facebook groups or Judaica rehoming communities such as L’dor V’dor Judaica or Heritage Judaica.
“New Judaica is great, but people definitely value something that has been touched and loved and appreciated over the years…you want something that has a little soul in it,” Steinhardt said. “So I think that even something that’s not of value, other people can appreciate that it has been loved and want to acquire it.”
Reflecting on Fox’s decision to spotlight her mother’s collection, Kaylie said that he had been a “guardian angel.”
“He didn’t have to do that, and really, it’s because of him that we’re able to have my mom’s legacy be how we could have wanted it,” Kaylie said.
Edelman said he expects the collection to be installed in the museum sometime this summer, where it will be displayed alongside a plaque honoring “Bubbie Cookie” and “Zayde Jay,” names the couple were referred to by their families.
For Kaylie, imagining the future museum visitors handling her mother’s kiddush cups and menorahs felt like “exactly how she would have wanted it.”
“When we lost Bubbie Cookie, we said the legend of Bubbie Cookie was over,” Kaylie said. “And now, for the legend and the legacy to move on, I mean, it’s unreal. It’s, I have no words, I can’t even articulate it. It’s just amazing.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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