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‘You’re on the path to sin’: A Florida rabbi faced antisemitic harassment after speaking up at a school board vote
(JTA) — Rabbi Adam Miller was exiting a school board meeting in his city of Naples, Florida, when two men approached him in the parking lot.
“Your prophet is not real, and Judaism is not a real religion,” they yelled at him, according to the subsequent police report. The rabbi recounted other colorful epithets, too: “Judaism is wrong.” “You’re on the path to sin.”
The encounter startled Miller, the senior rabbi of Temple Shalom since 2010. He knew that local students had experienced antisemitism at school and was aware that his city had a checkered past when it came to including Jews — but he had never before been accosted in this way.
“I was still wearing my kippah. I was clearly identified as the rabbi,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about the incident, which took place in early May. “Their tone was very hateful and angry, and they would not stop following me.”
Miller returned to the building to wait the men out. But he was shaken: They had been wearing badges supporting a viable candidate for district superintendent who was standing for election that evening — a man who had, during an interview for the position, argued that “unchurched, uncultured Americans” were a cause of the country’s “moral decline.”
Miller had come to the meeting that night because he was concerned about that candidate, Charles Van Zant, Jr., and felt the need to speak out against him. Van Zant is a military veteran who had been the superintendent of another district for four years until he was voted out in 2016. In his application for the post in Naples, he had said he was “encouraged to see traditional and conservative values returning to Florida Schools,” and during the meeting, his supporters echoed that ambition.
“We need to teach them Christian moral values,” one Van Zant supporter said during his public comment period, referring to schoolchildren. “I know that’s not a popular opinion.”
Van Zant would narrowly fall short in his bid to lead the district, losing out by a single board member’s vote. Yet the fact that he nearly won left local Jews rattled. That close result, coupled with the harassment of Miller, offered a stark illustration of how a rising tide of conservative activism in Florida politics — and surrounding local school boards across the country — can stoke antisemitism or otherwise come at the cost of Jews.
Reflecting on that night, Miller said he feared his city was falling prey to “this bigger culture that’s been allowed to exist, of hate towards the other, of letting fear of things that we don’t know or don’t understand drive us to be hateful.”
“I’ve really come to believe that silence is oxygen for hate,” he said. “Not speaking out, not saying something, is just letting it get bigger and more out of control.”
The dynamic present in Naples, a city of about 20,000 on the Gulf Coast, has been pronounced across Florida, where Republican lawmakers have empowered the activism of conservative parents. Recently the state rejected Holocaust education textbooks in part because they contained “social justice” themes, and districts in the state have, on parents’ request, removed books about Anne Frank, queer Jewish families and other topics related to Jews and the Holocaust.
“I think many of the people that were in that room would see themselves as good Christians,” said Jeffrey Feld, executive director of the local Jewish federation, who likewise came to the school board meeting to protest Van Zant. “On the other hand, there are certain groups they don’t want to be inclusive of. They clearly do not want to include, for instance, the LGBTQ community. There were different statements that were made that way.”
Feld added, “So yes, I think it is a great concern for all of us to have to deal with. And it’s something that we look at every single day.”
Adam Miller is the senior rabbi of Temple Shalom in Naples. (Courtesy of Miller)
Local Jews say Naples has a history of antisemitism, and trouble started brewing at the Collier County school board during its election last year. Three of the five seats were up for grabs, and all went to conservatives. Two of those new board members seemed to hold, or associate with people who held, antisemitic views.
One, Jerry Rutherford, identifies as a Christian but attends a Messianic congregation — part of a movement that calls itself Jewish but believes in the divinity of Jesus and often has ties with Christian organizations. Messianic Judaism is roundly considered non-Jewish by actual Jewish groups, and its emphasis on proselytizing to Jews is seen as antisemitic.
Rutherford is a former chairman of the local Christian Coalition and founder of a group that distributes free Christian Bibles to high school students, which he says is “in honor of Religious Freedom Day.” He told JTA he’s a proponent of school prayer and an increased focus on religion in the classroom, including putting replicas of the Ten Commandments in schools — measures many Jewish groups have long opposed.
Rutherford was the board member who prompted Van Zant’s “unchurched” comment, by asking him during the candidate interview process in April to diagnose “the reason for the moral decline in our country and in our schools.”
Another new school board member, Tim Moshier, was elected after one of his campaign volunteers was revealed to have posted antisemitic videos to social media — including TikTok videos about Jews “using pornography as mind control” — and who also declared herself an antisemite on the platform, according to an article in the Naples Daily News. The volunteer also maintained an active account on Gab, a social network for far-right extremists, which she frequently used to post antisemitic messages about Jews and Israel.
Confronted with the videos by a reporter for the Naples Daily News, Moshier initially said he didn’t have a problem with them and did not condemn antisemitism. (According to the article, his campaign’s official Instagram account had responded to a message from a Jewish TikTok user by stating, “We recommend that you do some research into the topic as she is not wrong and we will not be reconsidering her position for anyone else.”) Days later, Moshier did condemn both the videos and antisemitism “in the strongest terms,” saying he was not aware of the volunteer’s social media history.
The makeup of the new school board alarmed Feld, the Jewish federation executive who has been in his position for nearly a decade. He remains haunted by an antisemitic event that took place years before he even arrived in Naples: a “Kick a Jew Day” that local public school students had staged in 2009.
The stunt resulted in the suspension of several students as well as critical news coverage from around the world. As part of its response, the federation launched a “Stand Up For Justice Committee” that gives out annual awards to people fighting hate in the local community. Recipients have frequently included teachers and other employees of the local school district; four Collier County teachers were awarded the prize this year.
But Feld said it’s unclear whether the federation’s awards and other anti-hate efforts had changed the culture in local schools. He and Miller both said Jewish students had recently experienced incidents of antisemitic bullying at school. One reported a classmate who had showed up to school dressed as Adolf Hitler; another student superimposed a Jewish student’s face onto a concentration camp uniform and sent the image to their entire class.
Miller declined to share photographs of the alleged incidents, saying the students had asked not to share any further information about what had happened. Asked about the allegations, a spokesperson for the school district said that federal law prevents them from commenting on student discipline matters.
Feld said the recent manifestations of antisemitism are continuing a long local tradition of anti-Jewish bigotry. Jews who came to Naples up until recent decades, he said, “very definitely got the impression that it was not a friendly community to the Jewish community.” Today the Jewish Federation of Greater Naples serves around 10,000 Jews in the county, and the area has Conservative, Reform and Chabad congregations — though its Jewish infrastructure is far less robust than that of the Miami area, about 100 miles due east.
At the recent school board meeting he attended with Miller, Feld identified himself to the board as the Jewish federation president and made the case for Van Zant’s opponent as the better option for the Jewish community, saying she held the values of “sensitivity, civility, respect and inclusivity.” Those values were particularly important, he said, in light of the harmful legacy of “Kick a Jew Day.”
“That day spoke to antisemitism and hate,” Feld said. “In our community, antisemitism continues to grow. Hate continues to grow.”
Ultimately, Van Zant lost his election for superintendent 3-2 to the Jewish community’s preferred candidate, a longtime district administrator widely liked by her peers. Van Zant’s two votes came from Rutherford and Moshier.
Reflecting on the vote and its aftermath, Rutherford said the news of what had happened to the rabbi “saddens me, because I attend a Messianic Jewish synagogue. And actually, I blow the shofar at the synagogue.”
At the same time, he did not think that Van Zant’s comment about “unchurched” Americans indicated a threat to Jews. “I think he understands our background, as far as our Biblical background,” Rutherford told JTA. “He would not be opposed to anything Jewish.”
Rutherford seemed surprised to hear that his plan to distribute Bibles to students could be hostile to Jews.
“Well, what if we just gave out the Torah itself? Would that be satisfactory?” he said. Rutherford added he had not yet spoken to members of the local Jewish community about these matters but that he would reach out to the federation to have a conversation. (Weeks after this interview, Feld told JTA he had yet to hear from Rutherford.)
Moshier did not respond to multiple JTA requests for comment, both directed to him and to a spokesperson for the school board. But he does have at least one defender — Rutherford, who said that he did not believe Moshier was antisemitic, “because his wife is Jewish.”
Moshier’s campaign manager, Rutherford said, has “a free right to speak their mind. But that doesn’t mean [Moshier is] in agreement with it.”
A spokesperson for the Collier County school district declined to comment on the harassment of Miller, saying that the district does not comment on interactions between private citizens, adding that the district has a “zero tolerance” policy for “discriminatory and harassing misconduct by staff.”
In addressing the incident, Miller hopes law enforcement might be able to make use of a new law combating “ethnic intimidation” that was recently signed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, which makes it a felony to spread antisemitic messages on private property. But other police departments in the state have so far failed to make use of the new statute, and a JTA public records request for the police incident report showed that as of about a month after the altercation, no charges have been filed.
But Miller doesn’t want to focus on what happened to him. His primary worry, he said, is about the increasingly uncertain environment that Naples’ Jewish community seems to find itself in.
“There’s been a rising concern,” he said. “We keep seeing these things, and nothing’s really being addressed.”
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The post ‘You’re on the path to sin’: A Florida rabbi faced antisemitic harassment after speaking up at a school board vote appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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‘This isn’t the Gov. Newsom that we know’: One week after apartheid remark, calls to reconsider remain unheeded
One week after California Gov. Gavin Newsom caused a stir by using the term “apartheid” to describe Israel, Jewish leaders in the state and beyond — have tried in vain to get him to walk back his statement.
Those seeking answers include allies of the term-limited governor, a likely presidential candidate, who have defended his record and even the comment itself.
Newsom said March 3 on a podcast that Israel had been talked about “appropriately as sort of an apartheid state,” and suggested that a time may come when the U.S. should reconsider its military aid to Israel.
Some Jewish leaders have said the apartheid comment had been taken out of context, and representatives of Jewish groups who met with the governor’s staff following Newsom’s remark called the conversation constructive. But Newsom has not backtracked in public appearances since then, leaving those leaders split on whether a serious contender for the 2028 Democratic nomination — long seen as a champion of Jewish causes — is plotting a new course on the national stage.
Newsom’s clarification two days later — noting that he was referencing a Thomas Friedman column in the New York Times about the direction Israel was headed — offered them little succor.
“It’s out of step,” said David Bocarsly, executive director of Jewish California, a group that represents more than 30 Jewish community organizations in the state. “This isn’t the Governor Newsom that we know.”
Newsom’s office did not respond to an inquiry.
‘Sort of an apartheid state’
Newsom made the remark in a live taping of Pod Save America, a podcast hosted by former Obama administration staffers Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor. The duo, who are among the Democratic mainstream’s most vocal Israel critics, asked Newsom whether he thought the time had come to reevaluate American military support for the country.
In an extended response, Newsom brought up Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The issue of Bibi is interesting, because he’s got his own domestic issues,” Newsom said. “He’s trying to stay out of jail. He’s got an election coming up. He’s potentially on the ropes. He’s got folks, the hard line, that want to annex the West—the West Bank. I mean, Friedman and others are talking about it appropriately as a sort of an apartheid state.”
As to whether the United States should consider rethinking military support for Israel down the road, Newsom replied, “I don’t think you have a choice but that consideration.”
Newsom’s use of the term and apparent willingness to break from pro-Israel orthodoxy sent heads spinning. Jewish Insider described the interview as a “hard left” shift. A column in the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles assailed Newsom for “finger in the wind politics.” And secular outlets like Politico and The Guardian reported that Newsom had likened Israel to an apartheid state.
Even organizations that have historically enjoyed a collaborative relationship with Newsom publicly condemned the remarks. Jewish California, whose member groups include the state’s local Jewish federations, took to Instagram to call them “inflammatory.”
Newsom said in a subsequent live appearance March 5 that he was referencing Friedman’s recent assertion that Israel annexing the West Bank without giving Palestinians equal rights would create an apartheid system.
“I was specifically referring to a Tom Friedman column last week, where Tom used that word, ‘apartheid,’ as it relates to the direction Bibi is going, particularly on the annexation of the West Bank,” he said. “I’m very angry with what he is doing.”
The clarification wasn’t strong enough for the Jewish California coalition. Bocarsly told The Jewish News of Northern California last week the groups hoped to see a definitive public statement from the governor that he continues to support funding for Israel’s defense and that he “doesn’t believe that a thriving, pluralistic and democratic society, as it is in its current state, is an apartheid state.”
Tye Gregory, chief executive of the JCRC Bay Area — a Jewish California member group — added to the outlet that “we need to hear directly from the governor.”
The coalition left its conversation with Newsom officials believing such a statement was forthcoming, but Bocarsly said his optimism was fading.
“It’s been several days, and we haven’t seen the clarification that we had hoped,” Bocarsly said. “And we’re still waiting.”
A loaded word
Some international and Israeli human rights organizations say Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the treatment of Palestinians in the territory already constitutes apartheid.
The term was originally used to describe the system of institutionalized segregation in South Africa that granted the minority white population official higher status, denied nonwhites the right to vote and enforced a range of other forms of economic, political and social domination. Those applying the apartheid term to Israel point to the Israeli citizenship, voting rights, freedom of movement and legal protections granted in the West Bank to Israeli residents but not Palestinians in the territory.
But many Jews say that any charge of apartheid — whether referring to the present or a hypothetical future — oversimplifies the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and is used as a cudgel to delegitimize the Jewish state, where within its boundaries Israeli Arabs can vote and travel freely.
Israel annexing the West Bank — a stated goal of far-right ministers in the Netanyahu coalition like Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich — would replace the premise of Palestinian sovereignty in the territory, which is officially governed by the Palestinian Authority, and enshrine the two-tier system. Such a step, Friedman wrote in a Feb. 17 column, would amount to apartheid.
“It’s been several days, and we haven’t seen the clarification that we had hoped. And we’re still waiting.”
David BocarslyExecutive Director, Jewish California
Bocarsly believed that Newsom’s reference to apartheid had been misinterpreted — even after the governor clarified his views — as describing Israel today, rather than a future scenario.
Nevertheless, he said, by invoking the term “apartheid” at all the governor had played into an effort among Israel’s detractors to make use of terms like “apartheid” and “genocide” to describe the Jewish state’s actions a litmus test for elected leaders.
Only a month earlier, Democratic State Senator Scott Wiener — then the co-chair of California Legislative Jewish Caucus — called Israel’s war in Gaza a genocide, after first declining to during a congressional candidate debate and getting jeers in response.
“For someone as close to our community as Gavin Newsom is, I think it was disappointing and painful for a lot of people to see that he was falling into this test,” Bocarsly said. “We want to know that when it comes down to it, that he is willing to avoid criticizing Israel in that way.”
Halie Soifer, chief executive of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said Newsom’s initial comments had been taken out of context, and she was satisfied with his later clarification. Instead, she objected more to Newsom’s suggestion that the U.S. might eventually withhold military aid to Israel. The JDCA rejects withholding or conditioning such aid in its platform.
Still, while the “apartheid” phrase got the most attention, Soifer suggested it was just as revealing when — in the same podcast appearance — Newsom had described Israel’s rightward turn under Netanyahu as “heartbreaking.”
“It’s indicating his emotions are actually in this but also disagreement with the policies of the current Israeli government,” Soifer said. “And that is a view that polling has consistently shown is held by the vast majority of American Jewish voters.”
But she acknowledged that further backtracking would help, noting that she had listened to the section of the podcast multiple times to get a clear idea of his intent.
“I don’t think the average person is doing that,” Soifer said in an interview, “and he shouldn’t assume that either.”
The governor you know
The comments seemed to break with Newsom’s track record of verbal and legislative support for Jewish life both in the state and in Israel.
During his seven years in the governor’s office, he has funded the largest nonprofit security grant program in the nation, signed a landmark bill aimed at addressing antisemitism in public education and poured some $50 million into Holocaust survivor assistance programs. He also visited Israel to meet with Oct. 7 survivors less than two weeks after the attacks.
That made Newsom’s failure to hedge in a more fulsome way all the more confounding for his Jewish allies.
Gregg Solkovits, president of Democrats for Israel Los Angeles, a Democratic party club, thought the governor had been intentionally vague — and was intentionally waiting out the Jewish criticism — to “protect his left flank” as a future presidential candidate.
“He knows that in the upcoming election, there will be Bernie-supportive candidates who are going to be running for the nomination, and he will be attacked for being too pro-Israel, which he has been consistently,” Solkovits said. “Would I wish that he had not taken that approach entirely? Of course. I also understand he’s running for president.”
Soifer offered that Newsom might just be waiting for the right opportunity.
“He doesn’t actually legislate on this particular issue, so perhaps he feels he doesn’t need to clarify,” she said. “But I think it would be helpful for him to clarify that, especially if he’s seeking an opportunity at some point in the future to weigh in on such decisions.”
The post ‘This isn’t the Gov. Newsom that we know’: One week after apartheid remark, calls to reconsider remain unheeded appeared first on The Forward.
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Norway Police Apprehend 3 Suspects in US Embassy Bombing
Police vehicles outside the US embassy, after a loud bang was reported at the site, in Oslo, Norway, March 8, 2026. Photo: Javad Parsa/NTB/via REUTERS
Norwegian police said on Wednesday they had apprehended three brothers suspected of carrying out Sunday’s bombing at the US embassy in Oslo, in an attack investigators have branded an act of terrorism.
The powerful early-morning blast from an improvised explosive device (IED) damaged the entrance to the embassy‘s consular section but caused no injuries, Norwegian authorities have said.
The three suspects, all in their 20s, are Norwegian citizens with a family background from Iraq, police said.
“They are suspected of a terror bombing,” Police Attorney Christian Hatlo told reporters.
“We believe they detonated a powerful bomb at the U.S. embassy with the intention of taking lives or causing significant damage,” Hatlo said, adding that none of the suspects had so far been interrogated.
One of the men was believed to have planted the bomb while the two others were believed to have taken part in the plot, Hatlo said.
The brothers, who were not named, had not previously been subject to police investigations, he added.
A lawyer representing one of the three men said he had only briefly met with his client and that it was too early to say how the suspect would plead.
Lawyers representing the two others did not immediately respond to requests for comment when contacted by Reuters.
“Although it is early in the investigation, it is important that the police have achieved what they characterize as a breakthrough in the case,” Norway‘s Minister of Justice and Public Security Astri Aas-Hansen said in a statement.
Images of one of the suspects released by police on Monday showed a hooded person, whose face was not visible, wearing dark clothes and carrying a bag or rucksack.
Investigators on Monday said one hypothesis was that the incident was “an act of terrorism” linked to the war in the Middle East, but that other possible motives were also being explored.
Police are now investigating whether the bombing was done on behalf of a foreign state, Hatlo said, reiterating that they were also looking into other possible motives.
Europe has been on alert for possible attacks as the US and Israel conduct air strikes on Iran and Iran strikes Israel and US targets in the Middle East.
On Monday, a synagogue in the Belgian city of Liege was damaged by a blast that authorities called an antisemitic attack. It was not clear who was behind it.
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Belgium’s Jewish Community Sounds Alarm on Rising Antisemitism After Liège Synagogue Attack
Police secure the site of a synagogue damaged by an explosion early on Monday, in Liege, Belgium, March 9, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
Just days after a synagogue in Liège, Belgium was struck in an apparent antisemitic bombing, the local Jewish community is sounding the alarm over a surge in hostility and targeted violence against Jews across the country.
In an interview with the local news outlet La Première on Tuesday, the president of the Committee of Jewish Organizations in Belgium (CCOJB), Yves Oschinsky, called on government authorities to deploy soldiers to protect Jewish sites and institutions if police protection proves insufficient.
Following the attack on a synagogue in Liège, a city in the country’s eastern region, early Monday morning, Oschinsky warned that the Jewish community faces a far greater threat than authorities publicly acknowledge, emphasizing that Jewish institutions remain at heightened risk.
He also slammed the government for failing to appoint a national coordinator to fight antisemitism, while urging political parties and officials to take urgent, concrete action to protect the Jewish community.
Like most countries across the Western world, Belgium has seen a rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
According to the Belgian Interfederal Center for Equal Opportunities and the Fight against Racism and Discrimination (Unia), which tracks antisemitism nationwide, 192 reports of antisemitism and Holocaust denial were filed in 2025, following a record 270 cases in 2024 — marking two consecutive years well previous years.
Before the Oct. 7 atrocities, only 31 antisemitic cases had been reported in Belgium in 2022.
On Tuesday, the Brussels-based Jonathas Institute released a new report warning that antisemitic prejudices remain widespread and deeply entrenched in Belgium.
“The results are clear: the study highlights that the population of Brussels continues to hold many antisemitic stereotypes ‘inherited from the past’ of a religious or political nature,” the institute said in a statement.
The newly released report found that 40 percent of respondents in Brussels agreed with the claim that Jews control the financial and banking sectors, while one in four blamed Jews for various economic crises.
According to the study, these stereotypes are “sometimes expressed as obvious truths” without overt hostility, a pattern the report warns makes them especially prone to being trivialized, particularly online.
More than one in five Belgians believe Jews are “not Belgians like the others,” while 21 percent label Jews an “unassimilable race.”
“The attack on the synagogue in Liège confirms that it is no longer just antisemitic speech that has been unleashed, but antisemitic acts as well. This aggressive antisemitism continues to rise,” the institute said.
The survey also found that 70 percent of respondents believe Jews form a “close-knit or closed community.”
In relation to the war in Gaza, 39 percent of Belgians claim that “Jews are doing to Palestinians what the Nazis did to them.” This view is particularly common among 18- to 35-year-olds, who are more likely to compare Israel’s actions to those of the Nazis.
Within far-right circles, 69 percent believe Jews exploit the Holocaust, while 72 percent say Jews use antisemitism for their own interests.
Based on these findings, the Jonathas Institute urged authorities and policymakers to strengthen historical education, improve digital literacy, and remain vigilant against narratives that normalize or justify hostility toward Jews, warning that such discourse can ultimately spark real-world violence.
The institute also calls for formalizing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, aiming to better distinguish “legitimate criticism of Israel” from “forms of anti-Zionism that revive antisemitic patterns.”
IHRA — an intergovernmental organization comprising dozens of countries including the US and Israel — adopted the “working definition” of antisemitism in 2016. Since then, the definition has been widely accepted by Jewish groups and lawmakers across the political spectrum, and it is now used by hundreds of governing institutions, including the US State Department, European Union, and United Nations.
According to the definition, antisemitism “is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” It provides 11 specific, contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere. Beyond classic antisemitic behavior associated with the likes of the medieval period and Nazi Germany, the examples include denial of the Holocaust and newer forms of antisemitism targeting Israel such as demonizing the Jewish state, denying its right to exist, and holding it to standards not expected of any other democratic state.