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Where to celebrate Passover in NYC: seders, art and matzah pizza

(New York Jewish Week) — Passover is practically here! This year the eight-day holiday begins with the first seder on the evening of Wednesday, April 5 and ends the evening of Thursday, April 13.

Passover celebrates the Israelites’ departure from Egypt and is celebrated with one or two nights of seders where guests retell the Exodus story, drink four cups of wine, eat elaborate meals and send the kids on a hunt for the afikomen, a piece of matzah set aside for “dessert.. Whether your favorite part of the holiday is testing different matzah or flourless cake recipes, singing at the seders or spending time with family, there is plenty to do (and to prepare for, before the week begins). 

In case you don’t have plans for first or second night seders — or are interested in events going on throughout the week — read on for the New York Jewish Week’s holiday guide to celebrating Passover in the city.

City Winery’s 30th Annual Downtown Seder 

On Sunday, April 2 at 1:00 p.m., join a cohort of celebrity New Yorkers like Dr. Ruth, comedian Modi Rosenfeld, Mayor Eric Adams and musician David Broza for City Winery’s Annual Downtown Seder, which takes place at their flagship location at Pier 57 (25 11th Ave). Tickets start at $85 and include four glasses of wine, a vegetarian meal and “15 musicians, comedians, [and] political thinkers.” The event can also be live streamed for free. Register here.

Seder in the Streets for Housing Justice 

Join the left-leaning activist organizations Jews for Racial & Economic Justice and T’ruah for a pre-holiday celebratory meal and seder. The groups will be gathering in Tompkins Square Park on April 3 at 6:00 p.m., where they will share a meal and celebrate the holiday with houseless people in New York’s community, as well as talk about housing justice in the city. Find more information and register here

Ohel Ayalah’s First Night Passover Seder 

Ohel Ayalah will host a first night seder, customized for those in their 20s and 30s and ideal for New Yorkers who don’t have a regular synagogue membership. The community seder will be held in Prince George Ballroom (15 E. 27th Street) on April 5 at 6:30 p.m. with a wine tasting before at 6:00 p.m. Tickets are $96. Register here.

NYC Young Professionals Seder 

Chabad Young Professionals will host seders on both nights starting at 8:00 p.m. on April 5 and 8:45 p.m. on April 6. Each seder will be an “interactive and meaningful experience with no prior Hebrew or Jewish knowledge necessary” and includes wine and four-course dinner. Tickets start at $100, or $200 for both nights. Location to be announced. Register and check for more information here. 

Bonus: Find a Chabad seder in a neighborhood near you through their online portal. 

Second Night Seder with Jewish Community Project Downtown

JCP Downtown is hosting a second night seder on Thursday, April 6 at 5:30 p.m in Tribeca at 146 Duane St. The seder will be led by Rabbi Deena Silverstone and includes wine, matzah and a kosher dairy meal. The seder will follow the fun, modern haggadah “Don’t Fuhaggadahboudit,” which attendees are welcome to take home with them afterwards. Open to all ages, tickets begin at $72. Register here

Second Night Online Seder with My Jewish Learning 

Rabbi Moishe Stiegmann and My Jewish Learning will host “A Night to Remember,” a second night online seder on Thursday, April 6 at 6:30 p.m. Tickets for the interactive, three-hour seder begin at $18. Register and find more information here.

Intergenerational Community Seder and Israeli Folk Dancing at 92NY

Rabbi Samantha Frank and Rebecca Schoffer will host 92NY’s community seder on Thursday, April 6 at 5:00 p.m. The seder, open to all ages and religious affiliations, will focus on singing and storytelling. Tickets start at $125 and include a full dinner, wine and dessert; the event will take place at the Y’s Buttenweiser Hall (1395 Lexington Ave). Find more information here. 

Bonus: On Saturday, April 8, bring the family to the Y for a Passover Israeli Folk Dance Party, which will  teach circle, partner and line dances. Tickets are $20, register here.

Asian Jewish Passover with the LUNAR Collective

The LUNAR Collective is partnering with Brooklyn’s Congregation Beth Elohim to host a Passover Shabbat meal the day after the seders on Friday, April 7 at 6:30 p.m. The program, which takes place at CBE (274 Garfield Pl.) will include an Asian Jewish fusion meal and a reading from an Asian Jewish Haggadah. The in-person event is pay-what-you-can. Click here to register. 

Passover Pop-Up Exhibit at the Met

This fifteenth-century illuminated Hebrew manuscript copy of the Mishneh Torah will be on view during Passover at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Join gallery curators at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1000 Fifth Ave.) for a Passover pop-up exhibition on Monday, April 3 and Monday April 10, at 11 a.m. The gallery talk will feature two illuminated Hebrew manuscripts that date to the 15th-century Italian renaissance: the Mishneh Torah of Maimonides and the Rothschild Mahzor. The gallery talk is free with the price of admission. Find more information here.

Matzah Pizza Party for 20s and 30s

What’s better than a pizza party? A matzah pizza party! The Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan (334 Amsterdam Ave.) is hosting a matzah pizza party on Monday, April 10 at 7:00 p.m. for young professionals. The event is open to the public and features kitchen torches, kosher ingredients and wine. Tickets are $10; register here.

Looking for more choices? Find a local in-person or virtual seder through UJA Federation’s online portal, or check out the options curated by our partners at My Jewish Learning.


The post Where to celebrate Passover in NYC: seders, art and matzah pizza appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene Blames Trump for Threats Against Her After Their Split

FILE PHOTO: US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) speaks to reporters after a press conference to discuss the Epstein Files Transparency bill, directing the release of the remaining files related to the investigations into Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., September 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File Photo

Republican lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene accused US President Donald Trump on Saturday of putting her life in danger, saying his online criticism has triggered a wave of threats against her.

Greene, once a longtime Trump loyalist who has more recently taken positions at odds with the president, said she has been contacted by private security firms warning about her safety.

“Aggressive rhetoric attacking me has historically led to death threats and multiple convictions of men who were radicalized by the same type (of) rhetoric being directed at me right now,” Greene, a US House of Representatives member from Georgia, wrote in a post on X. “This time by the President of the United States.”

Trump broke with Greene on Friday night in a withering social media post in which he referred to Greene as “Wacky” and a “ranting lunatic” who complained he would not take her calls. He continued his criticism on Saturday with two more social media posts, calling her a “Lightweight Congresswoman,” “Traitor” and a “disgrace” to the Republican Party.

GREENE SAYS TRUMP AGGRESSION FUELS ‘RADICAL INTERNET TROLLS’

In her first response posted on Friday, Greene accused Trump of lying about her and trying to intimidate other Republicans before a House of Representatives vote next week on releasing files related to the late financier Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender who was friendly with Trump in the 1990s and 2000s before they had a falling out.

On Saturday, Greene wrote that she now has a “small understanding” of the fear and pressure felt by Epstein’s victims.

“As a Republican, who overwhelmingly votes for President Trump’s bills and agenda, his aggression against me which also fuels the venomous nature of his radical internet trolls (many of whom are paid), this is completely shocking to everyone,” she wrote.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on her post.

On Wednesday, Greene was one of only four House Republicans who joined Democrats in signing a petition to force a vote on releasing the full Justice Department files related to Epstein.

Trump has called the furor over Epstein, who died in a jail cell in 2019, a hoax pushed by Democrats.

He suggested in his Truth Social post that conservative voters in Greene’s district might consider a primary challenger and that he would support the right candidate against her in next year’s congressional election.

Online backlash from Trump supporters is not unusual. Right-wing influencers and conservative media personalities have become a potent online force in amplifying talking points and false claims, and attempting to discredit Trump’s rivals.

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‘They Wanna Buy a Lot of Jets’: Trump Says Eyeing F-35 Deal with Saudis

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stands in front of an F-35 stealth fighter at the IAF’s Nevatim base, July 9, 2019. Photo: Amos Ben Gershom / GPO.

i24 NewsUS President Donald Trump announced he is mulling a deal to supply Saudi Arabia with F-35 stealth fighter jets. “They wanna buy a lot of jets,” the leader told reporters aboard Air Force One.

“I’m looking at that. They’ve asked me to look at it. They want to buy a lot of ’35’ – but they want to buy actually more than that, fighter jets.”

The potential sale of the Lockheed Martin LMT.N.-produced aircraft comes as Trump plans to host Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House next week, with the two leaders expected to ink economic and defense deals.

Trump has also reiterated his hope that Riyadh would soon join the Abraham Accords. Last month Trump said he hoped Saudi Arabia would “very soon” join other Muslim countries that signed the Abraham Accords normalizing ties with Israel.

The establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia could shake up the political and security landscape in the Middle East, potentially strengthening U.S. influence in the region.

“I hope to see Saudi Arabia go in, and I hope to see others go in. I think when Saudi Arabia goes in, everybody goes in,” Trump has said earlier this month.

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Settlers torched a West Bank mosque — and the milquetoast Israeli mainstream response won’t suffice

For more than two years, masked settler mobs in the West Bank have torched mosques, burned Qurans, uprooted olive trees, attacked olive harvesters, and rampaged through villages — all with almost no consequences.

Just this week, masked settlers torched a mosque in Deir Istiya, burned Qurans and scrawled hateful graffiti on its walls — only two days after dozens of settlers attacked a village near Nablus, injuring several Palestinians and burning a warehouse. “All state authorities must act decisively to eradicate this phenomenon,” said President Isaac Herzog, calling the strikes “shocking and serious.”

But Herzog would be naïve to expect Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to heed his call. And the West Bank is rapidly turning into an emergency of explosive proportions.

The sharp rise in attacks on Palestinians and their property began in late 2022, when Netanyahu’s calamitous coalition took over, and ramped up with the onset of the Israel-Hamas war. The United Nations counted more than 1,400 incidents between October 2023 and October 2024.

But while the war in Gaza has reached a ceasefire, the violence in the West Bank shows no sign of abating: Independent trackers reported a record 264 settler attacks in October 2025 alone.

Add to that the Israeli military’s own violent record in the West Bank, and the picture is grim. In 2025 alone, the U.N. has documented at least 178 Palestinian deaths linked to settler and military violence.

If you look for the state’s corrective force you will find a yawning gap. In the most chilling scenes — in Huwara in February 2023, and in coordinated attacks on several villages this month — groups of masked young men have attacked Palestinian civilians, while soldiers and police have either arrived late or failed to stop the violence. Israel’s own watchdogs and human-rights organizations document a pattern of non-prosecution that even predates the current government. Yesh Din, which systematically tracks police investigations into Israeli civilians’ violence against Palestinians, shows that roughly 94% of files from 2005–2024 were closed without indictment, and that only about 3–6% of investigation files lead to conviction.

Which raises the obvious question: When attacks are so frequent and prosecutions so rare, who benefits?

Since late 2022, the survival of Netanyahu’s governing coalition has depended on hard-right parties whose leaders and bases overlap with the radical settler movement. Two ministers who matter — Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir — are both unapologetic advocates for settlement expansion and the vision of Jewish sovereignty over the West Bank, which they refer to by the biblical name of Judea and Samaria. Ministries and offices that oversee law enforcement in the West Bank — including the Civil Administration and Ministry of National Security — are effectively controlled by figures sympathetic to settlement expansion and skeptical of aggressive policing of their own supporters.

This political reality filters down into operational choices. When enforcement agencies are staffed and supervised by officials who owe their political fortunes to the settlement movement, enforcement will not be robust. Arrests — where they occur — rarely lead to charges that stick. In the first half of 2025, for example, there were hundreds of complaints, but only a fraction were opened as criminal files, leading to scant dozens of arrests.

Why would a democratic government tolerate this?

The answer isn’t just about coalition management. It’s about the government’s fundamental ideological sympathy with settlers, and the absence of a credible alternative plan for the land and people under Israeli control.

For decades, the West Bank settlement project could be dismissed as reversible, or up for bargaining in a final-status negotiation. But every new outpost has served to make a contiguous Palestinian state less viable, bringing Israel closer to incorporating millions of Palestinians — without giving them full citizenship or political rights.

The mainstream right lacks a plan for this demographic reality. But the far right has one: apocalyptic warfare and the eventual removal of Palestinians from the land, an outcome that extremists see as inevitable. That is why people like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir appear indifferent to the destabilizing violence, if not actively encouraging of it: instability is a feature, not a bug, for those prepared to use it to remake reality.

Now, the mainstream right has put itself in a position in which it cannot govern without the far right — so it has ceded moral and policy ground to radicals. The true spirit of Zionism — which is humanistic and humane — is suffering.

Which brings us back to Herzog. President Donald Trump, during his Knesset speech last month, urged him to pardon Netanyahu of all charges that he is currently facing in court. This week he did it again, in a letter claiming that Netanyahu is facing “a political, unjustified prosecution.” Herzog’s office said he held Trump “in the highest regard,” but that anyone seeking a pardon had to submit a formal request — something Trump lacks the ability to do.

I have a better idea. Pardon Netanyahu on the explicit condition that he leave politics altogether, forever. And have a new coalition, free of his corrupting influence and the morally destructive politics of the far-right, set to work to clean up his mess.

The post Settlers torched a West Bank mosque — and the milquetoast Israeli mainstream response won’t suffice appeared first on The Forward.

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