(JTA) — Former Vice President Kamala Harris held back from labeling Israel’s actions in Gaza a “genocide” on Sunday but said it was an appropriate question.

“A lot of folks in your party have called what’s happening in Gaza a genocide. Do you agree with that?” correspondent Eugene Daniels asked Harris during an interview on MSNBC’s  “The Weekend.”

“Listen, it is a term of law that a court will decide,” Harris responded. “But I will tell you that when you look at the number of children that have been killed, the number of innocent civilians that have been killed, the refusal to give aid and support, we should all step back and ask this question and be honest about it, yeah.”

Several lawmakers, including Vermont’s Jewish Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent, and far-right Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, have described Israel’s conduct in Gaza over the past two years in Gaza as a genocide, but the allegation has not gotten mainstream support in Congress.

Throughout Harris’ book tour for her new memoir, “107 Days,” the former vice president has drawn pro-Palestinian protests who have accused her of being a “war criminal” and of supporting “genocide” in Gaza during her term. She has at times rebuffed the protesters and also given airtime to their concerns.

“I was the first person at the highest level of our United States government or administration to talk about the fact that the people in Gaza were starving,” Harris told protesters at a book event last month, according to the Washington Post.

Later in the interview, Daniels asked Harris whether she agreed that President Donald Trump should be “commended” for his role in brokering the ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel that saw the release of the 20 living hostages on Monday.

“I don’t think we should hold any credit where it’s due,” said Harris. “I really do hope it becomes real and that the hostages are out, that Gaza is no longer being treated with such brutality of force, that aid goes in. I commend the people who have been a part of this process. I commend the Qataris, the Egyptians, and the president.”

The post Kamala Harris on whether Israel committed genocide: ‘We should all step back and ask this question’ appeared first on The Forward.

(JTA) — Like most synagogues, Congregation Beth El in South Orange, New Jersey added new rituals after the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks that killed 1,200 in Israel, saw another 251 taken hostage and launched a grinding war between Israel and Hamas.  

The Conservative congregation hung a “bring them home now” sign out front on behalf of the hostages. Rabbi Jesse Olitzky added the “Acheinu” prayer for redeeming captives to the weekly Shabbat service, and each week read the biography of a hostage. As the war raged on, the congregation sang songs of peace. 

There and elsewhere, congregants wore yellow hostage ribbons and pins on their lapels, and dog tags with the names of the missing. Some families lit extra candles on Shabbat. Rachel Goldberg-Polin, whose son Hersh would eventually be listed among the dead in Gaza, popularized the wearing of a piece of masking tape on which she wrote the number of days since the hostages were taken.  

This week, as the last 20 living hostages were returned to Israel as part of a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas, many Jews are relieved to be ending these rituals — even as they question whether it is right to do so and wonder how to channel their prayers and practices toward whatever comes next. Twenty-four deceased hostages are believed to be in Gaza, and even as soldiers return home and Gazans reclaim what’s left of their former lives, an enduring peace seems far away. 

At Beth El, the Acheinu and lawn sign will stay in place until the bodies are returned. In the meantime, Tuesday night’s celebration of Simchat Torah will be a chance to experience a sense of relief members haven’t felt in two years.

“Like so many we haven’t been able as a people to move forward and get to Oct. 8 until the hostages came home,” Olitzky said Monday, hours after Hamas released the living hostages. “And now there is a sense of being able to exhale and breathe and, God willing, to move forward, to rebuild, and for all Israeli citizens and for Palestinians to have opportunities to build peace.”

This week, rabbis and Jews in the pews are asking if it is time to move forward.

Rabbi Yael Ridberg, the recently retired spiritual leader of Congregation Dor Hadash in San Diego, said she would remove the ribbon and dog tag she wears when the bodies of the deceased hostages are returned. 

“I look forward to tucking them away, but not disposing of them,” she wrote in response to a journalist’s query. “I will stop wearing them when all the deceased hostages are returned. These are keepsakes of a time worth remembering, as hard as it has been for the last two years.”

Ronit Wolff Hanan, the former music director at Congregation Beth Sholom in Teaneck, New Jersey, said she is not sure what to do with the ribbon pin and dog tags she’s worn for most of the past two years. She’s torn between “this unbelievable release and relief and joy,” and sadness that there are still 24 bodies yet to be returned.

“My whole thing is, well, what do we do know?” said Wolff Hanan, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen whose son served over 300 days in the Israeli reserves during the war. “I keep thinking about the long, difficult road all of these hostages and families have ahead of them, and it’s just unimaginable. But also I’m thinking about, when it is really over? We don’t know if this is the dawn of a new era or if we are going to go back to the same old, same old.”  

Her partner, Rabbi Eli Havivi, offered his own solution to a similar dilemma: In synagogue on Monday morning, he wore his hostage dog tags, but covered with blue painter’s tape, in order to suggest that “it’s over, but it is not over.” 

On a Facebook page for Jewish women, a number of members spoke of their reluctance to stop lighting extra candles. Some felt that if they did, it would break a kind of spiritual commitment, or might suggest that they’ve given up on the freed hostages who will continue to have mental and physical challenges. Some referred to a passage from Talmud (Shabbat 21b) that extends the metaphor of the Hanukkah candles to suggest that someone should always add light, not subtract.     

By contrast, the comic Periel Aschenbrand wrote that she was eager to take off the button that she’d been wearing in solidarity with Omri Miran, a hostage abducted in front of his wife and two children on Oct. 7. “I can’t wait to be able to take it off tomorrow, and for Omri to be reunited with his daughters and family,” she wrote Sunday on Instagram. 

Alyssa Goldwater, an Orthodox influencer, wrote that she too is “really looking forward” to taking off the yellow ribbon pin she’s worn over the past two years, but that removing doesn’t mean forgetting. 

“When you remove a pin, the tiny holes never fully go away,” she wrote on Instagram. “They will remain and serve as a reminder that we will never forget what has happened to us over the last two years. We will never forget who stood by us and who stood soundly or against us. The holes will be tiny because we pray that the hostages will be able to eventually heal and live their regular lives again, where the unimaginable travesties they’ve been through won’t even be noticeable in the human eye, but the holes will remain, because this is a part of us now.”

Long before Oct. 7 led to a torrent of new practices, Jews altered their prayers and rituals in tune with current events, with some changes handed down from rabbis and others bubbling up from the “folk.” 

Some changes stick — like the Av HaRachamim memorial prayer, composed in the Middle Ages for those who perished in the Crusades — and others fall away. In the 1970s and ’80s boys and girls celebrating their b’nai mitzvah “twinned” with Soviet Jews unable to emigrate. Adults wore silver bracelets with the name of these refuseniks, and put them away when the emigration restrictions fell.  

The additions and changes that persist usually speak to other events, the way Av HaRachamim has become a weekly reminder of various Jewish tragedies. In general, however, a prayer or ritual that responds to current events “should have a theoretical timestamp for when it exits stage left, even if we cannot always know when that time will come,” Rabbi Ethan Tucker, president and rosh yeshiva of Hadar, explained in a Facebook post discussing the transition away from Oct. 7 practices. “Without that foresight and planning, the addition either straggles on, eventually becoming a kind of exhibit in the gallery of prayer, or it simply fades away when monotony and detachment have gotten the better of it.”

How did you, your synagogue ior Jewish institution mark the release of the hostages? Drop us a line at newsdesk@jta.org.

The Jewish calendar itself seemed to conspire in the spiritual turbulence of many Jews: The hostage release came on the eve of Israelis’ celebration of Simchat Torah — and the second anniversary, on the Hebrew calendar, of the Hamas attacks. 

The holiday is meant to be a day of unbridled joy. A centerpiece of Simchat Torah is the hakafah, when congregants dance with and around the Torah scrolls

Last year, congregations struggled with how to match the happy themes of the holiday with the one-year anniversary of the worst attack in Israel’s history. Olitzky said his congregation began last year’s Simchat Torah festivities with a “solemn” hakafah, where congregants sang Israel’s national anthem and a somber Hebrew song while standing still. Olitzky said he took solace at the time in the words of Goldberg-Polin, who said, “’There is a time to sob and a time to dance’ and we have to do both right now.”

And while the release of the hostages is also tinged with sadness — for the lost years, the captives who didn’t make it, the suffering still to come — many will use the holiday as a celebration of deliverance and gratitude.  

The release of the hostages, Olitzky said, will “allow Simchat Torah to be that — the holiday when we are supposed to have so much joy. Last year it was difficult to find that joy on Simchat Torah. I truly believe that we will have a greater opportunity in the days ahead to sing and dance.” 

Adat Shalom, a Reconstructionist synagogue in Bethesda, Maryland, will use Simchat Torah to celebrate the hostages’ return by ending another common practice since Oct. 7: a chair left empty on the synagogue’s bima, featuring the image of a missing hostage.

During the dancing on Simchat Torah, marked on Tuesday night outside of Israel, the congregation will bring the chair and use it to lift up members wedding-style. “We have a lot of people in the community who are really close with the Hostages and Missing Families Forum in Washington,” said Rabbi Scott Perlo. “We’re going to take that very chair, and take it from its depths and lift it up, and make it the centerpiece of our joy.”

Adat Shalom rotated in a number of special prayers and readings over the past two years, acknowledging, Perlo said ruefully, that “there’s so much to pray for,” including “the hostages, the safety of our family in Israel, the safety of people in Gaza,” and the state of American democracy. 

He understands that some congregants may be wary of letting go of the new rites and prayers — perhaps afraid that if they don’t keep up the tradition, the horrors that prompted their prayers will only return. 

“So what I would say to them is some version of, ‘Yes, don’t let it go completely, but let it transform into something new,’” said Perlo.

Rabbi Felipe Goodman of Temple Beth Sholom in Las Vegas, Nevada also plans to incorporate a ritual of release and transformation during Simchat Torah celebrations on Tuesday night. He’s asking congregants to bring their yellow pins and dog tags and place them on an heirloom Torah cover.  “This cover will be dedicated as a memorial and displayed at the entrance of our Temple, so that every time we walk through through Our Temple’s doors, we will remember what happened on Oct. 7, 2023,” he wrote in a message to members.

On Sunday, Hanna Yerushalmi, a rabbi based in Annapolis, Maryland, shared a poem on Instagram, called “Yellow Chairs” that imagined a near future in which hope will transform the fraught symbols of Oct. 7 grief and remembrance. It reads in part:

Empty chairs will be

saved for friends arriving late,

and tape will be

tape again,

and hostage necklaces

will be put away, forgotten in drawers.

and Saturday night will be date night once again.

The post Jews let go of hostage rituals with gratitude and grief appeared first on The Forward.

(JTA) — As the last of the Israeli hostages were released from Gaza, President Donald Trump addressed the country’s parliament — and was given a hero’s welcome.

Trump’s speech to the Knesset on Monday offered effusive praise for the state of Israel, warm — but not unguarded — praise for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and an outline for a vision of a future in which Israel is a full partner of every other nation in the region. And in typical Trump fashion, it was delivered with a mixture of bravado and unpredictable asides, some of which cut at the heart of several tensions in the Middle East.

Here are the big takeaways from Trump’s speech to the Knesset.

‘You’ve won’

With the hostages released, Trump made clear that, in his view, the era of Israeli military action in Gaza is over.

“Israel, with our help, has won all that they can by force of arms,” he said. “You’ve won. I mean, you’ve won. Now it’s time to translate these victories against terrorists on the battlefield into the ultimate prize of peace and prosperity for the entire Middle East.”

Speaking of the hostages later, the president reflected on meeting with their families and the spirit he saw igniting them.

“Over the past two years, I’ve met many of the families of the Israelis taken hostage and those that were taken hostage, unbelievable. I’ve looked into their eyes. I’ve seen the worst nightmares of their suffering, but I’ve also seen something else, the beautiful love of the people,” he said. “It’s that love that’s defeated the enemies of civilization, built this incredible country and this unbelievable economy and forged one of the great democracies of the world.”

‘You could be a little bit nicer, Bibi’

Amid reports that Trump had been frustrated by Netanyahu’s pace in negotiations to end the war in Gaza, the president had broadcast total alignment with Jerusalem. He had Netanyahu by his side at the White House last week when he announced that Israel had agreed to a ceasefire proposal that would be presented to Hamas, which later signed on. He invited Netanyahu into his motorcade on his way from Ben Gurion airport to the parliament building on Monday.

And he began his speech by praising Netanyahu — but not as effusively as he might have.

“I want to express my gratitude to a man of exceptional courage and patriotism whose partnership did so much to make this momentous day possible. You know what I’m talking about. There’s only one prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu,” Trump said. “He is not easy. I want to tell you he’s not the easiest guy to deal with, but that’s what makes him great.”

Later, as he praised opposition leader Yair Lapid as a “very nice guy,” Trump reacted to the reaction he perceived in Netanyahu and offered a rebuke.

“Now you can be a little bit nicer, Bibi, because you’re not at war anymore, Bibi, you did it.”

Bibi’s trial

Even while alluding to his frustrations with Netanyahu, Trump still took a moment to stump for him in the prime minister’s still-ongoing trial for political corruption. Turning to Israeli President Isaac Herzog at one point, Trump made a highly unusual show of intervening in the case, calling on him to use his pardon powers to settle the matter.

“Hey, I have an idea. Mr. President, why don’t you give him a pardon?” Trump said, to hoots and applause. “Give him the pardon. Come on.”

As chants of “Bibi!” could be heard, Trump continued, “It’s not in the speech, as you probably know, but I happen to like this gentleman right over here. And it just seems to make so much sense. You know, whether we like it or not, this has been one of the greatest wartime presidents.”

Trump then made specific reference to some of the bribery charges against Netanyahu, one of the cases that a large movement of Israeli protesters — including many hostage families — had cited as a reason why the prime minister should cede power.

“And cigars and champagne, who the hell cares about that?”

The U.S.-Israel relationship

As the war dragged on, segments of both the left and right in American politics have begun to question U.S. support for Israel. Trump vocally reaffirmed the bond.

“Israel will always remain a vital ally of the United States of America,” he said. “Israelis share our values, field one of the world’s most powerful militaries. You really do.” He added, “I’m proud to be the best friend that Israel has ever had.”

He also referenced the U.S. citizens who were abducted in Gaza in what he noted was “the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust,” painting American and Israeli grief over Oct. 7 as one and the same.

“The United States of America grieved alongside you, and we mourn for our own citizens who were so viciously taken that day,” he said. “And to all the families whose lives were forever changed by the atrocities of that day, and all of the people of Israel, please know that America joins you in those two everlasting vows: Never forget, and never again.”

What’s next for the ‘Avraham Accords’

At various points during his speech, Trump turned to his first administration’s signature foreign-policy accomplishment: the normalization agreements between Israel and a handful of Arab states, known as the Abraham Accords. On Monday he pronounced it the Hebrew way, “Avraham.”

“I like calling it the Avraham Accords. Avraham. It’s so cool. It’s so much nicer, you know? The Abraham versus the Avraham,” he said.

In the wake of what he said would be a concentrated rebuilding effort in Gaza, Trump also urged Israel and several Arab and Muslim nations to add to these accords. “Now we’re going to forge a future that is worthy of our heritage. We’re going to build a legacy that all the people of this region can be proud of,” he said.

“So instead of building fortresses to keep enemies at bay, the nations of this region should be building infrastructure to weave your commerce closer together, because you’ve got to compete with a big world out there in commerce. Now it’s a different kind of competition. Instead of making weapons and missiles, the wealth of this region should flow to schools and medicine, industry. And frankly, the new hot thing, artificial intelligence.”

Toward the end of his speech, Trump provided a list of countries and their capitals he said he would like to see forge stronger relations with Israel and each other. Some of them already have diplomatic ties to the country.

“New bonds of friendship, cooperation and commerce will join Tel Aviv to Dubai, Haifa to Beirut, Jerusalem to Damascus, and from Israel to Egypt, from Saudi Arabia to Qatar, from India to Pakistan, from Indonesia to Iraq, from Syria to Bahrain, Turkey to Jordan, the United Arab Emirates to Oman and Armenia to Azerbaijan,” he said.

How such an ambitious realignment would play on the larger diplomatic stage, as many countries remain furious at Israel for its handling of the Gaza war, remains to be seen. The president of Indonesia, one Muslim-majority nation long in discussions to join the accords, scuttled a planned historic visit to Israel Monday over reported concerns of pushback at home, though he attended the day’s summit between Israel and Hamas held in Egypt.

‘Make a deal’ with Iran

Amid talks of normalization, Trump paid special attention to the elephant in the room by urging the Knesset to use their momentum to “make a deal” with Iran, which both the United States and Israel had bombed at various times during the Israel-Gaza war.

“And even to Iran, whose regime has inflicted so much death on the Middle East, the hand of friendship and cooperation is open,” he said. I’m telling you, they want to make a deal.”

“Neither the United States nor Israel bear the people of Iran any hostility,” Trump continued. “We merely want to live in peace. We don’t want any looming threats over our heads.”

The moment stood out, as both the United States and Israel have had fraught relationships with Iran for nearly half a century. Netanyahu spoke to Congress in an effort to unravel a nuclear deal with Iran during the Obama administration; that deal wound up going through, only to be scuttled by Trump in his first term in office. Trump himself acknowledged this with some dark humor.

“As president I terminated the disastrous Iran nuclear deal, and ultimately I terminated Iran’s nuclear program with things called B-2 bombers,” he said. Yet, Trump pressed on, now a new deal should be reached, one predicated on Israel’s strengths.

He added, “A lot of Iranians in the United States are good people, smart, hardworking people. They don’t want to see what’s happened to their country. The story of fierce Israeli resolve and triumph since Oct. 7 should be proof to the entire world that those who seek to destroy this nation are doomed to bitter failure. The State of Israel is strong and it will live and thrive forever.”

Bibi’s demand for weapons

Trump was open about one aspect of U.S. support for Israel that had received particular scrutiny and protest during the war: the transfer of weapons for Israel to use in Gaza.

“We make the best weapons in the world, and we’ve got a lot of them, and we’ve given a lot to Israel, frankly,” he said. Deeming himself “all about stopping wars,” Trump said he “hated” some of the weapons the United States makes “because the level of power is so enormous, so dangerous, so bad.”

Yet, Trump said, the United States gave Israel all the weapons it needed. He even ribbed Netanyahu’s desire for military supplies.

“I mean, Bibi would call me so many times: ‘Can you get me this weapon, that weapon, that weapon?’ Some of them I never heard of, Bibi. And I made them,” Trump said. “But you used them well. It also takes people that know how to use them, and you obviously use them very well, but so many that Israel became strong and powerful, which ultimately led to peace. That’s what led to peace.”

Miriam Adelson

Trump gave a special shout-out to one of his wealthiest and most stalwart pro-Israel donors in the United States, Miriam Adelson — widow to casino magnate Sheldon. While praising her, he also suggested she “loves” Israel more than the United States — flirting with the kind of “dual loyalty” trope that mainstream Jewish organizations have tended to condemn in the past.

The Adelsons, he said with an unusual degree of candor for a president referencing a top financial backer, had been a large influence on his Israel policy.

“I kept my promise and officially recognized the capital of Israel and moved the American embassy to Jerusalem,” Trump said, to applause. “Isn’t that right, Miriam?” He then urged Adelson to “stand up” for recognition.

During his first term, Trump told the Knesset, “Miriam and Sheldon, they would come into the office… I think they had more trips to the White House than anybody else. Look at her sitting there so innocently. She’s got $60 billion in the bank… But she loves Israel. And they would come in, and her husband was a very aggressive man, but I loved them.”

Trump described his relationship with the Adelsons as one where they would needle him to drop by the White House. “He’d call up, ‘Can I come over and see you?’ I’d say, ‘Sheldon, I’m the president of the United States. It doesn’t work that way.’ He’d come in,” the president said. “But they were very responsible for so much.”

“I’m going to get in trouble for this,” Trump said. “But I actually asked her once, I said, ‘So, Miriam, I know you love Israel. What do you love more? The United States or Israel?’ She refused to answer. That means, that might mean Israel.”

The word on Gaza, and ‘the Board of Peace’ 

When Trump’s remarks touched on what should come next for Gaza, he painted his vision as one of international cooperation and prosperity, should the Palestinians want it.

Says several “very wealthy” Arab and Muslim nations have committed “to support a safe gilding of Gaza and beyond,” Trump added, “The total focus of Gazans must be on restoring the fundamentals of stability, safety, dignity and economic development so they can finally have the better life that their children really do deserve after all these decades of horror. I intend to be a partner in this effort.”

The “day after” plan for Gaza was one of the major sticking points of the negotiations between Israel and Hamas, the latter of which has not committed to relinquishing control of the territory despite Trump and Israel’s demands. Some members of Israel’s far-right governing coalition, meanwhile, have urged for the expulsion of all Palestinians and for Israel to control or resettle the strip.

In the past, Trump has promoted the idea of the United States, or his personal business interests, taking Gaza for itself and turning it into a resort. His tone was more measured in the Knesset, saying his plan for rebuilding Gaza involved a “board of peace” that would be “unbelievably popular.”

“Is that a beautiful name? Like a board, of peace,” he said. “The only bad thing, from my standpoint: every single nation involved has asked me to be the chair. And I’ll tell you, I’m very busy. I didn’t count on that.”

Trump framed Gaza’s future as one up to Palestinians.

“The choice for Palestinians could not be more clear,” he said. “This is their chance to turn forever from the path of terror and violence, it’s been extreme, to exile the wicked forces of hate that are in their midst. And I think that’s going to happen.”

Jared and Ivanka

How much does Trump’s Jewish son-in-law, Jared Kushner, love Israel? “He loves it so much that my daughter converted,” the president said.

Trump continued to riff on Ivanka’s conversion for a while. “I didn’t know this was going to happen,” he said. “And she is so happy, and they are so happy, at least, I think they’re happy. If they’re not, we have a big story, right?”

The post Iran, Abraham Accords and Bibi’s trial: What Trump said in his historic Knesset speech appeared first on The Forward.