Talya Herring recalls the moment she became a dedicated environmentalist. Years ago, while vacationing in Nepal as a law student, she was told to burn her household trash in the open air. 

“It woke me up,” she said. “I asked myself, ‘What are we doing with our trash? What does my role in this world look like?’”

Today, Herring serves as co-director of the Jewish Green Business Network, a program of the Jewish environmental nonprofit Adamah.

As part of this year’s Climate Week SF, the Jewish Green Business Network will co-host a free three-hour summit on April 22, alongside the Beersheva-based DeserTech & Climate Innovation Center.

The event will focus on climate policy and investment, emerging green technologies and business collaborations.  

Climate Week SF takes place April 18-26. With more than 700 events planned, both in-person and streamed, the program features “thousands of people and organizations focused on accelerating climate solutions,” according to its website. Those solutions cover everything from alternative energy to carbon capture to greener construction materials.

Itamar Cohn, director of the Adamah SF hub for the Bay Area, said the April 22 event reflects that Jewish-inspired environmentalism is “broadening our engagement with both the Jewish and non-Jewish communities.”

Herring expects investors, climate policy experts and start-up founders to attend.

“One [start-up] has developed lab-cultivated smoked salmon,” she said. “Another has developed beer made from purified wastewater. We have a delegation of start-ups from Israel focused on clean energy, water infrastructure and agriculture.”

One of the summit’s speakers, Adam Bergman, is managing director of S.F.-based Eco-Tech Capital, a consulting and investment banking firm. A former investment banker with Citi and Wells Fargo, he focuses on agriculture tech, food tech, energy efficiency, electrification, renewable energy and water technology.

“I’ve spent the last two decades at the intersection of innovation and climate sustainability,” he said. “I say to my clients, ‘If you do not have economic viability, then you will have no impact on environmental sustainability.’”

For the upcoming summit, he plans to discuss entrepreneurship and investment. 

“It’s important to have a community of professionals and industry leaders looking to solve problems,” he said. “We’re in the Bay Area, with some of the smartest, most innovative people around. We have to figure out how to bring more people to environmental sustainability.”

Herring agrees. Although Adamah devotes much of its energy to promoting environmental education, teen trips to Israel, farm fellowships and retreats, the Jewish Green Business Network focuses on solutions that tech start-ups and the corporate world can create to guarantee a better environmental future.

The Jewish Green Business Network, which launched last year, wants to be part of that future. “We brought together Jewish climate professionals, investors, founders, people working on solutions to mitigate climate challenges,” Herring said.

“The Jewish component is not only a bunch of Jews who want to shmooze, but an understanding of a shared mission to work together,” she added. “It’s not just transactional networking, but an added level of comfort. It feels different than a regular networking event because of this. Jewish values are a call to action to invest in the next generation.”

Prior to heading Adamah SF, Cohn served as executive director of Wilderness Torah, the Berkeley-based nonprofit that blended Jewish ritual and a reverence for nature. After 18 years as a standalone organization, Wilderness Torah was folded into Adamah in September.

Cohn said the Adamah SF has worked on expanding partnerships with local institutions such as the Oshman Family JCC in Palo Alto and the JCC East Bay in Berkeley. He sees the upcoming summit as an opportunity to broaden his hub’s outreach.

“I hope this event and others like it will cultivate a culture of community,” he said. “One of our goals is to bring people together, to work through disagreement to [create] a greater connection and community rather than canceling each other. We’re trying to create an ecosystem of engagement with Jewish nature connection and environmental care.”

(JTA) — TEL AVIV — The day before Yael Ben Cnaan was set to take over ownership of Bishvil Flowers, a corner flower shop located in the upscale Lev Hair neighborhood, an Iranian cluster munition landed on the street outside.

The March 9 impact shattered the store’s windows and left shrapnel holes in the walls. The flowers inside, which Ben Cnaan was unable to access due to police closure of the street, were left to wilt. “In the meantime, the shop was not operating. There was no income, but the expenses continue: rent, payments and commitments I already took on when entering the business,” Ben Cnaan said.

All of this took place in the lead-up to the Passover holiday, which, according to Ben Cnaan, is the most important time of year for flower shops like hers.

“We depend on the revenue during these weeks to keep us alive,” she said in an interview at her shop.

Ben Cnaan was seemingly undeterred by the strike and wasted no time setting up a crowdfunding campaign and posting on Instagram that she would soon reopen with a limited number of orders available for pickup ahead of the holiday. “I don’t have a choice. If I don’t manage to sell bouquets, we would have to close.”

An online fundraiser has raised 45,000 shekels (about $14,000), according to Ben Cnaan, allowing her to cover repair costs in the short term. But the long-term survival of the shop, which has become a community staple over its 17 years, remains uncertain.

In the Instagram post announcing the limited resumption of sales, she urged community members to consider purchasing bouquets or making donations to help sustain the business. “It will likely not be enough,” Ben Cnaan added.

Nearly four weeks into Israel’s war with Iran, which has quickly escalated into a regional conflict, stories like Ben Cnaan’s are commonplace. Businesses are struggling due to widespread closures and damage from Iranian missiles, which have killed at least 18 Israelis since the start of the war on Feb. 28.

Now, Israelis are starting the Passover holiday under wartime, with the conflict casting a somber shadow on the celebrations. Iran launched the largest missile salvo since the start of the war as families sat down to their seders on Wednesday night.

Earlier in the morning, as Iran launched another barrage of missiles toward central Israel, one man was killed, and at least 11 others were injured.

The missiles punctured efforts to approximate normality in the hours leading into the holiday. Early Wednesday morning, Orthodox families gathered to burn chametz, or leavened grains prohibited during the holiday, before the deadline to sell or discard it, while more secular families walked their dogs just hours after multiple sirens sounded due to incoming missile attacks. Throughout the day, Israelis preparing their meals had to pause cooking and cleaning to run to their shelters multiple times.

With a ban on large public gatherings still in place, major public seders, such as those typically hosted by synagogues in Tel Aviv, had waiting lists hundreds of people long.

And hotels hosting Passover retreats saw widespread cancellations as travelers from abroad were unable to get to Israel, and as families changed their plans to stay closer to home.

The war has also prompted new reflections on the meaning of the holiday. “We know there were Passover celebrations in all kinds of surreal circumstances. My grandmother told stories about celebrating Passover during the Holocaust,” said Avital Rosenberger, head of the emergency unit at the Israeli branch of the Joint Distribution Committee. “It’s still our mission to remember, to maintain routine and to ask what freedom really means.”

The JDC has been on the front lines of assisting Israelis affected by the war, including residents of Beit Shemesh, Arad, and Dimona whose homes were destroyed by ballistic missile strikes.

Those involved in relief efforts fear the full scale of the damage will only become clear after the war ends.

“We are so deep in it, and I’m not sure we’re seeing the whole picture,” said Rosenberger. “Some of the damage, especially the mental and emotional toll, will only emerge at the end. We already understand what’s coming.”

The growing human toll is one dimension of the damage. Ben Cnaan’s example underscores the financial toll of the ongoing war, as well.

On the morning of Passover, while many other stores on Lincoln Street remained closed, Ben Cnaan was still at work taking orders and assembling bouquets for last-minute shoppers.

A concept and tattoo artist who lives in Tel Aviv, she has worked on films including “Beirut,” starring Jon Hamm, Ben Cnaan worked in the flower shop for years before taking ownership. Because her business sustained physical damage due to the war, she is eligible for state compensation to offset losses and fund limited repairs. But she still fears that she will need to close down if business does not pick up soon.

According to estimates from Israel’s Finance Ministry, the economy is losing at least 4.3 billion shekels per week due to the fighting. As gas prices continue to rise following disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, civilians, whether affected directly by missile strikes or rising costs, are bearing the burden of the war.

For Johnny, who is spending a year volunteering with the JDC on Kibbutz Rosh Hanikra in the north, the toll of the war ahead of the holiday is becoming increasingly stark.

“They’re exhausted. They’re absolutely exhausted. And the thought of several more months like this could really break their spirit,” she said.

Johnny, who is Israeli but has lived most of her life in the United States, returned before the current round of fighting. She said it has been reassuring to be closer to her mother in the Galilee while volunteering on the kibbutz.

“At the same time, the community is incredibly supportive and empowering,” Johnny added. “I know they’ll be OK.”

She said she knows her seder plans with a host family in Rosh Hanikra may be interrupted by incoming missiles from Lebanon but remains in good spirits.

“We may have to head to the shelter,” she said. “But it’s certainly not the worst conditions for a seder our people have had to endure.”

(JTA) — At Temple Israel in suburban Detroit, where congregants are still reeling from last month’s attack in which a man drove a vehicle filled with explosives into the building, a new Passover tradition is taking shape.

“This Passover, we’re adding something new to our Seder plates: a single Lego block,” Temple Israel wrote in a post on Facebook.

The attack on Temple Israel, a Reform congregation and the country’s largest synagogue, took place as 104 preschoolers were inside the building. The assailant, Ayman Ghazali, was the only person to die in the ramming attack, which severely damaged the synagogue building and left one of its security guards injured.

While all the children were evacuated, their presence has shaped the synagogue’s call to add the children’s toy to seder plates as a symbol of both vulnerability and rebuilding.

“A Lego is a child’s toy — it represents the innocence that was threatened, and the lives that were protected. It represents our creativity, our strength, and the sacred work of putting the pieces back together again,” the post continued. “Place a Lego on your Seder plate this year. For our kids and our teachers. For our community. For the future we are building together.”

In the comments of the post, dozens of people pledged to include Legos in their Passover seders this year.

“I love this meaningful idea representing resilience and strength. I will put legos on our Seder plate in Santa Monica. Wishing all of the clergy and my Temple Israel family a Happy, Healthy and Peaceful Passover!” wrote one user.

Temple Israel is not the only victim of an antisemitic attack to be marking Passover for the first time since. Next week, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is slated to host a seder with interfaith leaders to commemorate one year since an arsonist attacked his official residence hours after he and his family hosted a Passover seder there. The seder will be held in the same room that was burned during the attack.

And in Minneapolis, Shir Tikvah, a Reform congregation, is calling on others to include a “steaming cup of tea in a travel mug” in the Passover seder to honor the community’s response to the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement policies in the area.

“After you open the door for Elijah and before you pour the fourth cup of wine, we invite you to pour tea for everyone at your table from your shared cup,” the congregation wrote in a post on Facebook. “As you enjoy your tea, take a moment to share how you hope to show up in your communities this year.”

Temple Israel’s symbolic addition to the holiday this year is also not the first time Jews have modified the seder plate’s traditional components to reflect the dangers that Jews increasingly face.

During the Israel-Hamas war, some families included mirrors, yellow ribbons and pomegranates on their plates to honor the hostages still held at the time in Hamas captivity. This is the first Passover since the last living hostages were freed in October.

“There’s something comforting about what we know, but what if, alongside those familiar traditions, we also made room for something new and unexpected,” Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said in a Facebook video posted Tuesday. “Rather than simply going through the motions, we might lean into the surge of Jewish pride we’re seeing all around us, even amid the current epidemic of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel hatred.”

I sat down with two wonderful historians and archivists, Lara Michels and Susan Morris, on March 22 to discuss the importance of preserving California Jewish history. We met up at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life in Berkeley as part of a celebration of 130 years of J., which was founded in late 1895.

Michels is head of archival processing at UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library, where she oversees collections that include the records of the Western Jewish History Center. Morris is a former curator and executive director at the Judah L. Magnes Museum, the precursor to the Magnes Collection, and the author of “A Traveler’s Guide to Pioneer Jewish Cemeteries of the California Gold Rush.”

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Why even bother saving all of these bits and pieces of history? What’s the point of keeping all these records?

Michels: This is what I think about 24 hours a day. Archives are primary sources — the photographs, the documents, the letters, all the things that people create in their day-to-day lives. They are the primary sources upon which historical research is based. They’re part of keeping a society, organization or institution accountable.

The Jewish community in the Bay Area has kept its archives, at least some of them! They’re spread around a little bit.

These are not easy things to create or maintain. They are somewhat expensive. You need certain kinds of materials and climate and staff, so they take a huge amount of commitment. At the Bancroft, we have 100,000 linear feet of paper, and we have to maintain that … kind of forever.

Morris: I’m going to point out a particular object that we almost didn’t acquire when I was at Magnes. It’s a portrait of Max Lilienthal. [Lilienthal was an influential rabbi in the antislavery movement in Cincinnati and a key figure in early American Reform Judaism. The portrait was defaced in 1861 by Jacob A. Cohn, a Confederate captain who died a year later at Manassas.] 

What is scrawled on the portrait, what is boldly written, I quote: “Sir, since you have discarded the Lord and taken up the sword in defense of the Negro government, your picture, which has occupied a place in our southern homes, we here return to you, and may you present them to your beloved black friends. I shall be engaged actively in the field, and should be happy to rid Israel of the disgrace of your life.”

I was working at Magnes when [founder] Seymour Fromer learned this was going to be auctioned. He went to many prospective donors to say this is an important part of the holdings of the Magnes. In the end, members of the Lilienthal family helped to supply the funds needed to bid at that auction. This is such an important original piece of history.

How is it decided what will be preserved? How do you prioritize, when funds and space are not endless?

Michels: You have to remain connected to the community. We are short on space, short on paper, short on everything. But we have to make decisions. Sometimes our decisions do come down to: Do we have enough space?

They would have debates [at the Magnes] about what parts of the community they were capturing and which parts they weren’t. And they were sensitive to the fact that they were capturing more from the German Jewish community, from the Eastern European Jewish community, and they talked about that, and they were attempting to remedy that at various times.

In your work, are there collections or items that just stay with you?

Michels: I have collections that stay with me and that I think about all of the time. The Congregation Sherith Israel records — it’s a big collection, an amazing collection, going back into the 1850s. It is the only real significant organization whose records survived the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco.

Its records document the history of the city in really interesting ways. I was committed to retaining almost everything. This collection is truly spectacular. I’m very happy that I got to work on it.

Morris: This is a rough translation of a letter written from Downieville, California, Mother Lode country, in November of 1856. The writer is Johanna Mayer Hirschfelder. She writes to her mother and brothers in Germany, describing her trip from New York to San Francisco a month earlier.

Let me read you just a couple of passages: “Our trip was, with God’s help, one of the best and most beautiful that has been made in a long time.” 

There are pages and pages about what she ate and how she spent her time. She says, “On October 2 in the morning, at nine o’clock, we left on the Panama Railroad via the isthmus from the Gulf of Darién, where it was awfully hot, and my arm, which held the umbrella, was blistered.”

The point is — these are human beings, like we are.

J.’s archives are online at env-jweekly-jweeklydev.kinsta.cloud. How can people access other records?

Michels: The Bancroft Library is open to the public. You have to request [the records] ahead of time. It’s a little more logistically challenging, but everybody is welcome to use the Bancroft Library and any of the collections. We do have reference librarians who can help you figure out how to access things.

What should people do when they have materials that might be worth preserving?  

Michels: Our curators will engage with you. They do an appraisal, where they’re trying to figure out whether this is the right fit for the Bancroft Library.

It could be a lengthy process, deciding whether we should add it to the collection. But we are collecting Jewish Americana to this day. We’re still bringing materials in from various families and organizations.

Morris: This has to do with your curiosity and alertness and awareness of the importance of documenting and preserving the diversity and complexity of the Jewish community you live in, of your family. Recognize that each of your stories is important. We are the holders of the future archives. We are the collectors of the breadth and the depth of the knowledge of the Jewish experience.

Defense attorneys for five Stanford pro-Palestinian protesters are trying to force the district attorney and his entire staff off the case by focusing on what they describe as the DA’s false charges of antisemitism against their clients.

“DA Rosen harbors an unwarranted and baseless view that these defendants are not only antisemitic, but they are also anti-American,” deputy public defender Avanindar Singh argued in a Feb. 25 motion to disqualify Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen and his staff.

A first attempt by prosecutors to convict the five protesters — who occupied and vandalized a Stanford University building in June 2024 — culminated in a mistrial in mid-February. Rosen declared at the time that his office would retry the case. 

That effort is now on hold after defense attorneys filed a motion to recuse Rosen and his staff. On March 26, Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Kelley Paul granted a motion from the defense team to obtain additional documents that may support their recusal motion. 

Paul also pushed back the hearing on the recusal motion to April 30. 

Singh filed the recusal motion in late February, less than two weeks after Superior Court Judge Hanley Chew declared a mistrial when a jury failed to come to a unanimous verdict. The jury was split 8-4 on felony conspiracy to trespass with the intent to occupy and 9-3 on felony vandalism, with the majority of jurors in favor of a guilty verdict on both charges. 

The recusal motion argued that Rosen, on his personal campaign website and in fundraising materials, unfairly described the case as an example of “fighting antisemitism.” Defense attorneys said such language labels the defendants as antisemites.  

“There is no evidence for such animus,” Singh wrote in the motion, pointing out that the defendants have not been charged with a hate crime. “The conflict makes it unlikely the defendants will receive a fair trial.”

A page on Rosen’s campaign website titled “DA Rosen fighting anti-semitism” contains links to media coverage around the time that he charged the 12 protesters. After one protester pleaded no contest, 11 protesters were indicted. Five were tried earlier this year after the remaining protesters received mental health diversions or agreed to no-contest pleas on reduced misdemeanor charges.

Rosen, who is Jewish and whose late father was a survivor of Nazi concentration camps, has openly supported Israelis since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacre in Israel. He spoke at an Oct. 22, 2023, rally calling for the release of hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7. He spoke again at a Unity March against antisemitism in March 2024 and at the Hillel of Silicon Valley a year later. 

Flanked by demonstrators waving Israeli flags, Rosen led a crowd in chants of “Bring them home!” at the Oct. 22, 2023, rally in San Jose organized by UnXeptable, the Israeli pro-democracy group. “This district attorney’s office will vigorously prosecute any antisemitic hate crimes that take place in this county,” Rosen said to cheers.

The defense team alleges that the Rosen campaign’s “fighting anti-semitism” webpage, which includes links to Rosen’s UnXeptable rally speech and others, was also used in a fundraising email blast in early December 2025. 

They argue that Rosen’s actions have tainted the entire office. 

Meanwhile, throughout the legal proceedings, prosecutors have argued that the political motivations of the protesters are not at issue. They instead focused on the extensive physical damage done to a Stanford building.

In the early morning of June 5, 2024, 12 protesters broke into Building 10 on the Stanford campus, which houses the university president’s office, shattering a window to gain entry to the building. Once inside, protesters barricaded entrances to the building using tools and furniture, covered security cameras and spattered fake blood around the building.

Five protesters –– Maya Burke, German Gonzalez, Taylor McCann, Hunter Taylor-Black and Amy Zhai –– elected to face the felony charges in court. 

Singh said his team plans to issue subpoenas to Rosen’s campaign for additional details regarding a Dec. 5 email and a Dec. 14 fundraising event. 

“DA Rosen told the recipients of the blast, and the general public … that his prosecution of German Gonzalez and the co-defendants in this case was part of DA Rosen’s fight against antisemitism,” Singh, who represents Gonzalez, wrote in the reply brief.

Robert Baker, a Santa Clara County deputy district attorney, and Sharon Loughner, a representative from the California Attorney General’s Office, each filed oppositions to the discovery motion. 

During a March 18 court hearing, Loughner argued the defense team’s reasoning for wanting additional time to retrieve records isn’t relevant to the case. 

Baker said during the same hearing that the defense attorneys requested records from the DA’s office related to Rosen’s personal campaign, which the office does not possess. He also challenged a defense allegation that the prosecution was politically motivated. 

In response to a request for comment, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office referred J. to the California Attorney General’s Office, which did not immediately respond. 

If the judge grants the recusal motion to disqualify the DA’s office, the case would shift to the California Attorney General’s Office for a retrial or dismissal, per the California Penal Code. 

Rosen has served as Santa Clara County district attorney since 2011. He is up for re-election this year. 

As the waxing moon shone in a dark sky, seven men gathered on Sunday for an ancient ritual in the grassy courtyard of Berkeley’s Jewish Renewal synagogue Chochmat HaLev.

Leaping, whooping and hollering as the ritual reached its apex, the men were engaging in Kiddush Levana, or “sanctification of the moon,” a Talmudic rite for sanctifying God.

“It is perfect. You are loved. All is clear. And I am holy,” the men chanted in unison, reciting a meditative phrase by the late Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, a Renewal co-founder.

Noah Phillips, a therapist and occasional Chochmat HaLev teacher — he led a Talmud class and a session on Jewish reincarnation during Shavuot last year — organizes Kiddush Levana as an exuberant monthly ritual and a place for intimate discussion about masculinity. The event is in its second year and is open to all masculine-identifying people.

“It’s this amazing thing where we channel blessing,” he said. “By directing it at the moon, which is this feminine principle, we’re putting ourselves into the mature masculine element.”

The evening started with participants sharing their struggles and successes from the last month. That was followed by the chanting from text put together by Phillips, with each person taking turns and reading a passage.

Their chanting got louder and louder, until it grew into a joyous frenzy, with everyone jumping and yelling with their arms pointed skyward. Then came handshakes and hugs, with each man enthusiastically greeting the other with “Shalom aleichem” and the responding “Aleichem shalom” — peace be with you.

The evening ended with arm-in-arm dancing and singing “David Melech Yisrael,” in praise of King David.

Participant Danny Kaplan described Kiddush Levana as a blend of Jewish ritual and men’s group.

“In the modern context of what it means to explore masculinity, I really like that those two things are interwoven together,” said Kaplan. 

Another participant, Philip Epstein, said he returned to Judaism through psychedelics after feeling confined by rigid, traditionalist practices when he was young. He said he feels a connection to the ritual as a way to both grieve and evoke his late mother.

“She has appeared to me in the moon a few different times,” said Epstein, “usually with some kind of psychedelic or expanded state.” He said Kiddush Levana enables him to speak to his mother through the feminine gaze of the moon.

“It’s been really beautiful and painful,” he said, “but it’s given me a way to have this relationship.”

(JTA) — The Israeli parliament passed a law on Monday mandating the death penalty for West Bank Palestinians convicted of carrying out deadly attacks against Israelis.

The law, which was approved by the Knesset in a vote of 62-48 following nearly 12 hours of debate, marked a victory for Israel’s far-right following a years-long push to increase penalties for Palestinians convicted of lethal attacks. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voted for the measure.

“This is a day of justice for the victims and a day of deterrence for our enemies. No more revolving door for terrorists, but a clear decision. Whoever chooses terrorism chooses death,” far-right Israeli security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has long lobbied for the measure, said in a statement.

The legislation has drawn widespread opposition from critics in Israel and beyond, including Israeli justice officials, progressive Jewish groups and the foreign ministers of Australia, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. Critics of the law say it effectively mandates the execution of Palestinian attackers while intentionally excluding Jewish extremists.

“In the highly volatile political climate that now imperils the rule of law in Israel, this issue further normalizes the invocation of state violence,” Michael Zoosman, the co-founder of L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty, wrote in a Times of Israel op-ed in January. “It widens the gap between modern-day Israel and the central Jewish value of the inviolability of life.”

Minutes after the legislation’s passage, the Association of Civil Rights in Israel announced that it had filed a petition to Israel’s highest court asking it to strike down the legislation, calling it “discriminatory by design.” The current right-wing government has sought to weaken the court’s authority.

The law does not actually spell out that it is meant for Palestinians only. But mandates death by hanging as the default punishment for non-Israelis convicted in military court of deadly nationalistic killings. Only West Bank Palestinians are tried in military courts.

The law includes provisions that judges can opt for life imprisonment under unspecified “special circumstances,” but the death penalty would otherwise be mandatory.

While the law includes a separate provision that allows courts to impose the death sentence on Israeli citizens, who are tried in civilian courts, it stipulates that it is only intended for those who seek to “negate the existence of the State of Israel,” which experts say would likely exclude Jewish Israelis.

The law will not apply retroactively to militants held by Israel for their role in the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks, who are the subject of a separate bill now under consideration.

The law’s passage comes as Israel’s critics accuse it of maintaining an apartheid state. Some of the law’s critics say it adds ammunition to that argument.

Mickey Gitzin, the acting CEO of the New Israel Fund, decried the law in a statement, writing that it “strikes at the core of liberal democracy.”

“Make no mistake: this is a death-penalty law for Arabs alone. Its message is unmistakable—Jewish lives matter, Arab lives are cheap,” Gitzin said, adding that the group and its grantees were “already on the front lines—bringing this law to court, demanding it never be carried out, and working to scrub it from Israel’s books like the stain it is.”

Rabbi Jill Jacobs, the CEO of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, condemned the passage of the legislation in a statement, calling it a “sign of Israel’s dangerous slide into violent populism.”

“This legislation moves Israel away from justice rooted in dignity, restraint, and equality, and toward a politics of vengeance that endangers lives and erodes the moral foundations of the state,” Jacobs said. “This is a moment of reckoning for Jewish organizations and American Jewish leaders. Those who care about human life and dignity for all living in the land must speak out forcefully against this law and continue to work for systemic change.”

(JTA) — The man who attacked Temple Israel in suburban Detroit last month was inspired by Hezbollah, the FBI confirmed on Monday.

Ayman Ghazali sent a video to his sister in Lebanon shortly before driving a fireworks-laden truck into the West Bloomfield, Michigan, Reform synagogue on March 12, the FBI revealed during a press conference in Detroit.

“This is the largest gathering place for Israelis in the state of Michigan in the United States,” he said in the video. “I have booby-trapped the car. I will forcefully enter and start shooting them. God willing, I will kill as many of them as I possibly can.”

Ghazali was the only person to die in the attack, which injured a security guard and severely damaged the Temple Israel building. He died after shooting himself while trapped inside his truck as it burst into flames.

Israel previously said that Ghazali’s brother, who had been killed in Lebanon days before the attack, was a Hezbollah commander.

“Based on the evidence gathered to date, we assess this attack to be a Hezbollah-inspired act of terrorism purposely targeting the Jewish community,” Jennifer Runyan, the FBI’s special agent in charge in Detroit, said at the FBI press conference.

She said Ghazali had begun searching for pro-Hezbollah materials online early this year but began planning the specific attack only days before it took place, buying an automatic rifle as well as explosives before heading from his home in Dearborn Heights to West Bloomfield.

A new California bill would require state government forms that collect demographic data to add “Jewish” as an ethnic identity.

This would both allow Jews to identify themselves as an ethnicity for the first time and make California the first state required to collect data on Jews in this way.

Checking the box will be optional.

Currently, some state government forms ask a question about religion and include “Jewish” as a response. State Sen. Henry Stern (D-Sherman Oaks), a California Legislative Jewish Caucus member who introduced SB 1387, told J. that the state needs better demographic data on Jews in the state. He added that some may identify as Jewish ethnically instead of religiously.

“This is really just to identify and understand the citizens we’re serving, and how to best serve them and what pressures they might be going through,” said Stern, who introduced the bill in late February. “We’re trying to give space for people who don’t fit in a box right now.”

He said that this gap in data has had real consequences, ranging from hate crimes getting miscategorized to difficulties in understanding trends affecting Jewish students in public schools. 

California collects demographic data on forms for services like public school enrollment, voter registration, paid family-leave benefits and CalFresh food assistance. 

SB 1387 is coauthored by state Sen. Ben Allen (D-El Segundo) and Assemblymembers Marc Berman (D-Palo Alto) and Josh Lowenthal (D-Long Beach). Like Stern, the co-authors are members of the Jewish Caucus. 

The bill is sponsored by Jewish California, which represents a statewide coalition of more than 40 Jewish organizations and is formerly known as the Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California, or JPAC.

The bill was introduced just months after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 91 into law. That legislation created a new category under race and ethnicity on state forms for people with Middle Eastern and North African origins, which includes Israelis.

“There are a lot of Jewish people that identify with their Jewish identity based on ancestry or history, language, food, culture, physical characteristics and values, and those things that are often defining characteristics of ethnicity,” said David Bocarsly, Jewish California’s executive director. “We’re not just a religion. We’re a culture, a peoplehood and an ethnicity. That is what we are.”

The bill would also amend education law to clarify that the category of ethnicity “is inclusive of Jewish identity,” according to the bill text. 

The requirement to include “Jewish” as an ethnic identity would apply broadly across state government, affecting agencies that collect demographic data in areas like health, education, social services, licensing, research and surveys.

The bill would also add Jewish identity to criminal justice data within the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, as well as to disability benefits data.

Under SB 1387, the data collected would be publicly reported in aggregated form, meaning the information would be presented as averages, totals or percentages without personal identifiers.

The bill, which will likely undergo revisions during the 2026 legislative session, has tentatively earned institutional support among Jewish organizations. For some people, though, it raises significant questions about privacy. 

Joshua Goldstein, a professor of demography at UC Berkeley, said that although it would be presented in aggregated form, this type of data is “often collected in a non-anonymized manner.” He pointed out that “a respondent’s name will be linked to their answer from the outset of data collection and only removed later” for publication.

Goldstein, who has studied how mixed-race and ethnic populations form and are identified, said it is important to consider whether the benefits clearly outweigh the risks of creating such a dataset.

“We should be very, very cautious about potential side effects of the collection of ‘ethnicity’ on Jews,” he said. “One does not need to go to Nazi Germany to see historical examples of government data on ethnicity being misused.”

Stern stressed that he understands the “sensitivity of the moment,” and Bocarsly noted that the measure is intended to act as a “protective shield” for the Jewish community.

They said that individuals who are concerned about sharing their identity are not required to check the box. They each added that in their view, better data can improve health care outcomes, public schooling and other government services.

“If there are a few people who don’t feel comfortable sharing that data, they don’t have to” Bocarsly said, “so there shouldn’t be any risk here.”

Updated March 31

How did you or your family come to call the Bay Area home? 

Perhaps you come from a multi-generation San Francisco family. Maybe you showed up in the East Bay or North Bay for the Summer of Love and never left. Perchance you are a recent arrival in Silicon Valley.

J. has been serving the Bay Area Jewish community since 1895. In celebration of our 130-year-old archive, we are launching an audio-history project to preserve individual histories in our region. We want to hear your story.

If you’re interested in participating in the project, call us at 415-263-7200 ext. 953 by April 15 and tell us how you or your family became a Bay Area resident..

In the message, be sure to include your full name and how you or your family came to call the Bay Area home. Because we are organizing the project in chronological order, we ask you to include important years in that story. (A ballpark estimate is fine.)

J. kicked off this project at our “History is Calling!” event on March 22 at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Life and Art in Berkeley, where we marked the 130th anniversary of our publication and archive, which is online.

Even though your message will be recorded via voicemail, just know we’re all ears. We’re looking forward to hearing from you. Again, please call us at 415-263-7200 ext. 953 by April 15.

Thank you for preserving a slice of Bay Area Jewish history.

Update on March 31: Ednah Beth Friedman’s name has been corrected in the caption.

This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox.

Christian influencers like Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson are rallying their followers against Israel — and Jews. And to do so, they’re also weaponizing a centuries-old concept that underlies many strains of Christianity.

It’s called supersessionism, and it’s the idea that Jesus’ existence supersedes all commands, laws and beliefs that came before it. Christians often say that Jesus’ death “fulfilled” God’s commandments, meaning that everything God said to Jews in the Hebrew Bible, all of the covenantal promises and laws, are obsolete.

These views on Israel, and their theological interpretation, collide with a Christian Zionist movement that deeply supports Israel for its own scriptural reasons, believing that Jews must return to Israel to fulfill a prophecy and herald Jesus’ own return.

Yet supersessionism has become a theme in Christian opposition to Israel. We hear it in the words of Carrie Prejean Boller, a recent Catholic convert and a now-former member of the Religious Liberty Commission, a Trump administration council on religious protections. After she used a panel on fighting antisemitism as a platform to declare that her religious convictions prevented her from supporting Israel — and was removed from the commission as a consequence — she doubled down. “The Catholic Church is the True Israel,” Prejean Boller declared in a post on X. “Christians are the spiritual Semites. We are the new people of God.”

Candace Owens, a Christian podcaster who often refers to Judaism as Satanist; avowed white supremacist Nick Fuentes; and right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson have all similarly said that their Christianity prevents them from supporting Israel because Jesus has obviated the need for a holy land. “As Jesus says plainly in the Gospels, I am the Temple. I am the Temple now,” said Carlson in a recent video, explaining his religious opposition to Israel.

These supersessionist Christian influencers have expressed support for Gaza and criticized Israel on political and moral grounds; that part is not religious. But they have also insisted that they must oppose Israel from a religious perspective, because its very existence goes against their belief that Jesus has taken the biblical place of Israel.

In their hands, supersessionism fuels not only opposition to Israel, but explicit antisemitism — Prejean Boller has said that she is incapable of being antisemitic because, she argued, since Catholics are the true Semites, she would have to be discriminating against herself. Owens repeatedly refers to Judaism as the “synagogue of Satan,” an age-old accusation that in rejecting Jesus, Jews have rejected God and become evil. 

This ancient and controversial piece of theological history is increasingly becoming a bludgeon against Israel, and Jews more broadly.

The roots of supersessionism

In the supersessionist understanding of Christianity, now, Jesus’ followers — Christians — are the chosen people of God, overriding and replacing the Jews in covenant with God.

Scholar Susanna Heschel has referred to supersessionism as a form of colonization. “Christianity colonized Judaism theologically,” she writes in an essay on supersessionism in Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” arguing that the newer religion usurped its central theological concepts while “denying the continued validity of those ideas for Judaism.”

The reasons supersessionism emerged as a dominant belief in Christianity are rooted in a complicated history. Christianity arose from Judaism, and Jesus was a Jew. So early Christians put a lot of work into differentiating themselves and their new religion from Jews and Judaism.

“Paul, you know, he did not want Christians to adopt Judaism,” Marcia Kupfer, an independent scholar who researches and writes about supersessionism, particularly in medieval art, told me over the phone. “It would mean that they are turning to the law when they should be just putting their faith in Jesus.”

Much of that differentiation involved rejecting the continued validity of Judaism. While Christians do consider the Hebrew Bible to be part of their holy texts, there’s a reason they refer to it as the “Old Testament” — because, now, it is obsolete, making anyone who continues to follow its teachings in some way backward and no longer in active relationship with God.

“It is this problem of having, in a way, consumed Judaism,” Kupfer said. “It’s part of their Bible. But it has to be preparatory, prophetic, some anticipatory stage to something more complete and true. More spiritual. So it’s at the same time taken over and rejected.”

Who believes in supersessionism?

Today, it can be tough to definitively say what movement thinks what, due, in large part, to the stratospheric rise of Christians who consider themselves non-denominational — and to the linguistics around supersessionism, which some consider to be a negative term, even as others embrace it.

“It often doesn’t get talked about as supersessionism,” said Matthew D. Taylor, a theologian and visiting scholar at the Center on Faith and Justice at Georgetown University. “I don’t know too many Christians who will come out and say: ‘I’m a supersessionist.’”

But, in general, the more doctrinally focused the church — Catholicism, Orthodox, Calvinism — the more likely it is to have historically preached supersessionism; the more experiential churches, such as the non-denominational charismatic movement, are less attached to the ideology and often lean toward endorsing Israel.

Among the sects that have historically preached supersessionism, however, the ideology has been a topic of hot debate since the Holocaust. In recent years, these churches — especially the Catholic church — have made moves to reject the ideology, due to supersessionism’s antisemitic undertones.

Rev. Russell McDougall, director of ecumenical and interreligious affairs at the United States Council of Catholic Bishops, told the Forward that “the church has repudiated” supersessionism “quite clearly,” and admonished Catholic influencers like Owens, Prejean Boller and Fuentes in a letter from the USCCB. He pointed to a 2015 Church document titled “The Gifts and Calling of God Are Irrevocable,” released on the 50th anniversary of another groundbreaking document about Jews, Nostra Aetate.

Nostra Aetate, a portion of the revolutionizing Catholic council known as Vatican II, is lauded for improving church views on Jews. It rejects the belief that the Jewish people bear responsibility for Jesus’ death, and also affirms Christianity’s roots in Judaism. But, while Nostra Aetate sought to improve Catholic respect for Judaism, it still affirms some supersessionist ideas. “Although the Church is the new people of God,” it says, “the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God.” Jews, in other words, are not hated by God — still, Christians have replaced them as God’s favored children.

The 2015 treatise grapples with this issue at far greater length. It admits that rejecting supersessionism undermines the central beliefs of the Church. “The theory that there may be two different paths to salvation, the Jewish path without Christ and the path with the Christ,” the document says, “would in fact endanger the foundations of Christian faith.” How to excise supersessionism without undermining the church, it concludes, “remains an unfathomable divine mystery.”

The idea that salvation is given by God exclusively through Jesus is so central to church teachings that rejecting supersessionism poses clear contradictions — which is perhaps why modern Christian influencers are returning to it.

The Christian movements that do not preach supersessionism — the charismatic non-denominational movements, Pentecostal Christians, and fundamentalist evangelicals such as Mike Huckabee, the current U.S. ambassador to Israel — don’t resolve the contradictions either.

Many Christian Zionists focus, in part, on a line in Genesis, 12:3, in which God says that those who love Israel will be blessed and those who oppose it will be cursed; Ted Cruz cited this verse to Tucker Carlson in explaining his support for Israel. Others reference prophetic books in the Bible that point to God’s promises around Israel. But they do not necessarily engage with other lines in the New Testament that imply support for supersessionism.

“They’re reading the Bible in a very helter-skelter way,” said Taylor of the charismatics.

Why does any of this matter?

While supersessionism is core to Christian theology, it might seem like a niche debate best left to pastors and rabbis. But, looking at statements from Carlson, Prejean Boller and others, it’s clear that it informs and justifies their politics regarding Israel and Jews at large — even though it has officially been rejected by many churches.

“They’re in many ways rebelling against the past 60 years of Catholic theology, and trying to hearken back to something that they view as more authentic,” said Taylor of the influencers. “So I think that the supersessionist piece is signaling something significant because it’s part of the broader distaste for some of the modernizing shifts within Roman Catholicism.”

Supersessionist beliefs have, for years, driven antisemitism. It is woven into centuries of artistic and cultural portrayals of Jews as backwards, lesser or even Satanic, based on the idea that Jewish practice is defunct and has rejected God. Synagoga, a symbolic representation of Judaism throughout medieval art, is often depicted as blind. The theological precept has also driven attempts to evangelize and convert Jews for centuries, something Christians might not understand as antisemitism but which many Jews see as an attempt to erase Judaism.

Many, many church leaders — Catholic and otherwise — support Israel. Christian Zionists like Huckabee or John Hagee, a preacher who runs the Christian Zionist advocacy group Christians United For Israel, are a major force in the U.S. Some of these groups lean even philosemitic, appropriating Jewish rituals such as blowing the shofar or wearing a tallit into their Christianity. (This is also seen by many Jews as a form of supersessionism and cultural appropriation.)

Still, a growing number of Christians are embracing antisemitism in the name of supersessionism. This theology undergirds the increasingly common argument that some antisemitic beliefs are a fundamental part of Christianity — and therefore that asking Christians to fight antisemitism infringes on their freedom of religion.

Former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene refused to vote for the Antisemitism Awareness Act, saying it would restrict Christian beliefs. Prejean Boller, in the Religious Liberty Commission hearing on antisemitism that resulted in her removal, accused the Jews on the panel of calling all Catholics antisemites. Since then, she has repeatedly rejected accusations of antisemitism and said that they are infringing on her own religious liberty.

This debate — whether or not Christianity embraces or rejects Jews, and how either choice operates theologically — has become a core conflict in American Christianity, and among the right wing in the U.S.

“I think Israel has become a kind of battleground between these folks with the more interventionist kind of Christian Zionist,” said Taylor, “versus this more kind of isolationist, Catholic and Calvinist, supersessionist and antisemitic coalition.”

But even the more philosemitic side isn’t really embracing Jews for their own sake or on their own terms. Though politicians like Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz cite scripture to justify their support for Israel, it’s an uneasy alliance rooted in Christianity, not Judaism.

For these Christian Zionists, Jews operate as a way to access and experience a form of Christianity that feels ancient and authentic — think Paula White-Cain, Trump’s former spiritual advisor, being wrapped in a Torah by a messianic Jewish “rabbi,” an act of supposed Judaism that no Jew would ever do. For many of them, support for Israel springs out of a scriptural hope for the end times, and the need to gather Jews in Israel to trigger the apocalypse.

“On the American far right, this bifurcation into philosemitism and antisemitism are not opposites,” said Taylor. Instead, he said, they’re “two sides of the same coin — they’re often instrumentalizing Jews for Christian purposes.”

This story was originally published on the Forward.

(JTA) — More than half of U.S. Jews disapprove of the U.S. war against Iran, according to a new poll by a nonpartisan polling firm.

At the same time, an Israeli survey of “connected” American Jews found a slight decrease in support for the joint U.S.-Israeli operation against Iran since its start a month ago.

The new poll found that 55% of American Jews oppose the U.S. military action against Iran, compared to just 32% who support it. The poll found a sharp partisan divide, in line with polling of Americans in general, with Republicans more supportive than Democrats.

A quarter of respondents said they were “torn because while Iran is a threat to peace, this is not the way to handle it.”

The survey was conducted online in mid-March by the Mellman Group, led until his death last year by Jewish Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, and included 800 registered Jewish voters.

The poll found that a large majority of U.S. Jews believe President Donald Trump should have sought congressional approval for the war — including nearly a third of those who support it. And about four in 10 said they opposed the war because it lacked “clear provocation and clear objectives.”

The survey also found that more than half of U.S. Jews say they are concerned that conducting the war jointly with Israel will “be a long-term problem prompting concerns about the role of Israel and American Jews in U.S. foreign policy.”

The results add complexity to the picture of American Jewish sentiment about the war. A poll released last week found that 61% of Americans overall oppose the war, suggesting that American Jews may be slightly more supportive overall — especially when considering that American Jews tend to vote Democratic.

Still, the new poll suggests that American Jews as a whole are less supportive than the “connected” American Jews surveyed regularly by Israel’s Jewish People Policy Institute. About two-thirds of that panel supported the war when surveyed during its first week, according to JPPI. Last week, that number was down to 62%, according to its latest results published on Sunday.

JPPI’s first survey of U.S. Jewish sentiment during the war drew criticism because it reflected the sentiments of a relatively narrow slice of American Jews. The institute says its polls reflect the sentiments of “connected” Jews because its panel, drawn from people with ties to American Jewish groups, includes fewer intermarried Jews, more Jews who are affiliated with denominations, more Orthodox Jews and more Jews who have lived in Israel than demographic data would suggest is representative of U.S Jewry overall.

The Mellman Group’s executive vice president, Michael Bloomfield, said in a statement that his poll’s results underscore the complexity of American Jewish sentiment about the war.

“American Jews are not monolithic. There can be difference, and in this case strongly held on both sides, with a middle group torn between mixed feelings,” he said in a statement. “In today’s political environment, partisanship is a very strong driver of views. That is true across the country across demographics, including American Jews.”

This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox.

Despite a temporary boost after Oct. 7 — the so-called ‘solidarity spike’ — traditional Jewish community in the United States has been in decline for at least a generation.

Synagogue attendance, regular Shabbat practice, paying congregational dues — never have these seemed less appealing to more Jews.

This isn’t all that surprising. American Jewry is evolving — interfaith households are up, support for Israel is down — and the onus, to a degree, is on the Hillels and Jewish Community Centers and large metropolitan synagogues to respond to these changes.

Yet the growth of a group like Judaism Unbound, a digitally-savvy Jewish organization founded in part as an alternative to the mainstays of American-Jewish life, would seem to suggest that, in certain quarters, the usual offerings just aren’t cutting it.

What the organization’s members share above all, said Lex Rofeberg, its senior Jewish educator, is a failure to connect meaningfully with “classic Jewish institutions.”

Unbounders — Rofeberg’s somewhat hokey name for the group’s members — are on the fringes of Jewish community for several reasons: among them, political beliefs; accessibility; interfaith dynamics; or a perceived knowledge deficit. There are, for example, a disproportionately high number of converts and Jews from interfaith backgrounds in the organization.

Lisa Heineman, a professor of Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa, and a longtime Unbounder, told me over email that despite her repeated efforts to get involved with Jewish institutions, she “simply felt like an outsider — I didn’t know the rituals, couldn’t play Jewish geography, didn’t fit into the ethnic Yiddishkeit.”

For many Unbounders, distance from mainstream Jewish community is not just figurative, but literal. “There’s a ton of creativity off the beaten path,” Heineman wrote. “And Judaism Unbound has been alert to what we have to gain by listening to Jews in places like Iowa, Oklahoma or Mississippi — and by really integrating them into their conception of American Jewish life.”

An unconventional approach

Judaism Unbound — or the ‘Institute for the Next Jewish Future,’ the group’s lesser-used official name — has embraced what Rofeberg calls “digital-first” Judaism, the better to reach those Jews in far-flung locations. With occasional exceptions, most events take place online. “Digitally, you are able to reach everywhere,” Rofeberg said. “People who are ostracized, people who are marginalized in whatever ways, find us. We had a lot of success very quickly online in ways that could not have happened offline.”

The events themselves — in keeping with the group’s anti-institutional bent — are sold as a departure from tradition.

“To be a Judaism Unbounder,” Rofeberg said, “is not to presume that the status quo is eternal.” One recent program, for instance, explored books from the Apocrypha, the liturgical texts that, though hugely influential, were never accepted into the biblical canon. The ‘ApocryFest,’ as the event was known, was typical of an Unbound program: zany and experimental, deeply if unconventionally Jewish, and, in truth, a little intellectually demanding.

Another of Unbound’s principal offerings is the ‘UnYeshiva’, a virtual beit knesset of sorts that offers online classes on an increasingly sprawling suite of topics, such as ‘Genesis: People and Solidarity in Bereshit’; ‘Every Body Beloved: A Jewish Embrace of Fatness’; and ‘Jews and Revolution: Socialists, Anarchists, and Radicals in the Modern World.’

The ‘UnYeshiva’ debuted in 2021 and was so well-received that Rofeberg and co. added a longer certificate program for the especially dedicated. These can take up to three years to complete, and consist of four separate classes, followed by a so-called capstone project, which the organization’s website describes as “a unique expression of each student’s holy work in the world.”

Heineman’s capstone project was a day-long, genre-spanning workshop —  art, text study, meditation — that invited participants to reflect on a “path to a meaningful Jewish future.” That Heineman had had a previous capstone proposal shot down, on the grounds that her idea was too conventional, captures Judaism Unbound’s animating spirit, its insistence that participants innovate and experiment.

This programming is, suffice it to say, atypical, not least when set against the broader American-Jewish landscape. “Our premise from the get-go,” Rofeberg told me, “is that it’s very hard for existing legacy organizations to drastically change what they do in ways that will reach a new constituency, when they also have their own constituency.”

Matt Perry, a current UnYeshiva student, agrees. “If there’s one idea that I’ve noticed many participants perhaps share,” he wrote, “it might be the belief that a revolution is unlikely to emerge from within existing Jewish structures.”

UnBound, through the airwaves 

For all the UnYeshiva’s successes, the organization’s most popular venture remains its first: its eponymous podcast, hosted by Rofeberg and, until very recently, Dan Liebenson, Judaism Unbound’s founder. (Liebenson has stepped back from the organization’s day-to-day affairs to focus on a new Jewish venture.)

Both Perry and Heineman came to Judaism Unbound through the podcast, which launched in March 2016, and has since been downloaded over 3 million times. Heineman compared its array of guests and topics to “entering Narnia.”

In an era of ideological insularity, guests have run pretty much the full gamut of serious opinion. To name a few: Sarah Hurwitz, Peter Beinart, Shai Held, Danya Ruttenberg, Hey Alma founder Molly Tolsky. “Week after week,” Heineman told me, “I’d discover a new book, a new musician, a new activist organization, a new online educator — all working on this incredibly exciting project of re-thinking and re-invigorating Judaism.”

Rofeberg, for his part, wasn’t always so satisfied with the podcast. For a while, he felt it was creating a kind of epistemic distance between hosts and listeners. “Other than listening to us and emailing us,” he said, “they weren’t able to really actively participate.”

In 2023, the organization hired Miriam Terlinchamp, an Ohio-based rabbi, as executive director. Rofeberg credits her with introducing a less top-down pedagogical vision, and today the group has “more spaces where our people can come up with their own experiments,” he said. It hosts monthly Shabbat gatherings — online, naturally — during which participants explore one prayer in depth. There’s also an annual Shavuot event, Shavuot Live, a 24-hour-long Zoom gathering that draws hundreds of Unbounders and generates lengthy discussions in the event’s chatroom.

“In every respect, we’re trying to broaden who Judaism Unbound is,” Rofeberg said. “We’re not dictatorial, right?”

A post-Oct. 7 boost

The organization has grown sharply, especially of late, precisely because it hasn’t changed all that much. It’s always been a little counter-cultural and vaguely transgressive; it’s long suggested that Jewish life has passed over vital constituencies; and it’s consistently held that “the oldest Jewish tradition,” in Rofeberg’s phrase, “is upending Jewish tradition.”

The salient difference recently — read: since Oct. 7 — is that more Jews have come around to that interpretation. “We’ve had a lot of people find our work in the last few years, because more people than before feel alienated from other organizations,” Rofeberg said.

Concern over Israel’s actions in Gaza certainly helps explain this shift. As Rofeberg conceded, Judaism Unbound welcomes anti- and non-Zionists “in a Jewish world that largely doesn’t.”

The organization doesn’t have an official stance vis-a-vis Zionism. (“We’re a space that does not define itself with any ‘ism,” Rofeberg said.) One of its more impressive accomplishments, in fact, is gathering together under a single banner, albeit a virtual one, Jews who would otherwise scarcely interact.

In short, Judaism Unbound is that often-invoked-but-harder-to-realize idea of a big tent, where different beliefs mingle freely but are held together by a set of unifying values. For many, therefore, it has been a refuge from the division that has lately defined much of organized Jewish life.

Yet, for Perry, it’s more than that. “Over time, and combined with other semi-aligned efforts,” he wrote, “it has the potential to transform the Jewish world.”

This story was originally published on the Forward.

(JTA) — Over 1,000 diaspora Jews are petitioning Israeli President Isaac Herzog to intervene against settler violence in the West Bank, saying that the settlers are threatening Israeli security.

“Mr. President, the terror, death and destruction inflicted by Jewish-Israeli extremists against innocent Palestinians across the West Bank is an abomination,” says the open letter published Thursday. “It is not only morally shameful but a strategic threat to the future of Israel. It damages world Jewry and the relationship of future generations with Israel.”

The letter continues, “Sadly, based on events and on the statements of the most extreme coalition partners it can be concluded that the violence now engulfing the West Bank is not only condoned by the government but is in fact policy.”

The letter was organized by the The London Initiative, a liberal Zionist network founded earlier last year to “strengthen Israeli democracy, advance a fairer shared future for all citizens of Israel, revive hope in the prospects of achieving secure peace, and improve relations between all Israelis and world Jewry.” The number of signatories is growing as the letter circulates.

It comes as violence against Palestinians in the West Bank — often unpunished by Israeli authorities — has reached new heights, with settlers allegedly killing seven Palestinians in the last month, including one on Thursday, and driving others from their homes.

The situation has grown so extreme that the Israeli army this week took the unprecedented step of diverting soldiers from Lebanon, where Israel is battling Hezbollah, to the West Bank. Both the chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces and the Central Command chief have warned in recent days that conditions in the West Bank are contributing to a dire manpower shortage in the army.

The issue has also ignited concern from the United States, and from Israel’s U.S. ambassador, Rabbi Yechiel Leiter, who told Ynet that he believed the situation was deterring some in Washington from supporting Israel. He called on the rabbis of the West Bank to constrain their disciples.

“I’m so angry about the issue of Jewish riots in Judea and Samaria,” Leiter said. “It’s a handful of a few hundred people who are staining an entire enterprise — and everyone is silent.”

The new letter signed by diaspora Jews calls on Herzog to advocate for change with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right ministers who have not interceded to stop the violence. The signatories include prominent philanthropists including Charles Bronfman; liberal rabbis from multiple countries; and former British and Canadian ambassadors to Israel.

“Mr. President, Pesach is upon us. As we have for millennia, Jews everywhere will reflect on the promise of freedom and responsibilities of power,” the letter says. “We call on you to use your position to implore the government to put an end to the abomination of Jewish-extremist terror and the era of impunity for its perpetrators.”

When she was 18, Dalia Ziada says, she was like any other college student in her home country of Egypt. When the Second Intifada erupted in 2000, she joined anti-Israel protests on her university campus. 

At the demonstrations, Ziada said, she saw protesters burning the Egyptian flag. Among them were members of the Islamist political movement Muslim Brotherhood, Ziada recalled, and she experienced an intense transformation. 

“It was literally the moment I poked out of this ideological box I was stuck into my whole life,” Ziada told an audience Tuesday night at the Russian-speaking Jewish Community of SF Bay Area’s Menorah Center SF. “I started to ask questions.”

Ziada’s wakeup call, which led her to question everything about the Arab-Israeli conflict, started her toward a career promoting human rights, democracy, liberalism and women’s rights, and later into politics, foreign affairs and counterterrorism. 

Nowadays, Ziada identifies herself as a “Muslim Arab Zionist from Egypt.”

After university, Ziada earned a master’s degree in international relations from Tufts University in Massachusetts. She currently works in the U.S. as the Washington, D.C., coordinator for the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, a think tank and research institute “committed to fighting antisemitism on the battlefield of ideas.” 

Ziada, 44, spoke in San Francisco about her tumultuous journey to the United States, her work on American college campuses since Oct. 7, 2023, and how she believes the current war in Iran will shape the region. The talk was sponsored by the Northern California chapter of StandWithUs, a group that supports Israel and combats antisemitism, and other local Jewish groups. 

Before Oct. 7, 2023, Ziada was thriving in Cairo, where she directed the Center for Middle Eastern and Eastern Mediterranean Studies. She had established herself as a promoter of Muslim-Jewish dialogue. But that work was disrupted when she publicly condemned the Hamas massacre two days after it occurred. Ziada described Hamas’ actions as “terrorism” in a post on X, calling attention to the rapes of women and the targeting of children and the elderly.

“Whoever supports Hamas or justifies their acts of terrorism is a partner in their crime against the people of Israel,” Ziada wrote.

She immediately faced retaliation. 

The response reached a fever pitch when local fundamentalists targeted her family’s home in search of Ziada after declaring that “her blood should be shed,” she recalled. 

On Nov. 2, 2023, she fled Egypt for her safety and hasn’t returned. “I left everything literally in five hours,” she said, adding that she left her “whole life behind.” 

“Everything I ever owned I just lost. It was a very, very tough experience.”

Ziada escaped to the United States. 

Her work in the nonprofit sector led her to collaborate with Hillel International. During the 2024-2025 academic year, she spoke at nearly 60 universities throughout the country as an educator in Hillel’s Teach-In Tour. 

As Ziada traveled from one American campus to another, she witnessed students join anti-Israel demonstrations. She said she was transported back to her own college experience. This time around, though, she became a target of protesters who attempted to disrupt her events. 

In February 2025, members of Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Maryland organized a campaign urging administrators to cancel an event with  Ziada. When that effort failed, over two dozen protesters demonstrated outside the event, the school’s student newspaper reported. 

In previous media appearances, Ziada has voiced her thoughts on encountering protesters who hate Israel and back Hamas. Her role, as she sees it, is not to evangelize for Israel, or invalidate concerns about Palestinian rights. Rather, it’s to condemn violent extremism in all its forms. 

“I don’t want them to fall in love with Israel. I just want them to be taken away from supporting Hamas,” Ziada told Israeli American podcaster and former Columbia University professor Shai Davidai in an interview last fall. 

Since the U.S.-Israel war with Iran began in late February, Ziada’s mission has expanded to raising awareness of what she sees as the ultimate purpose of the current war: to dismantle the region’s largest sponsor of terrorism — Iran — and to build inroads for peace agreements with Israel. 

She pointed to Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen as examples of Iran-sponsored proxies that demonstrate the regime’s role as a “terrorist organization with political legitimacy.”

“This regime always treated neighboring countries as a backyard, as a disposable arena,” she said. 

Near the end of the talk, moderator Shachar-Lee Yaakobovitz, who organizes StandWithUs collaborations with universities across California and the Pacific Northwest, asked how Ziada expects the current war to affect the prospects of the Abraham Accords, the normalization agreements between Israel and Bahrain, United Arab Emirates and Morocco signed in 2020 and 2021. 

Ziada remains optimistic about the future for Middle East peace, despite the intensity of the war with Iran. She sees the emergence of other peace advocates like her, such as Mohammed Saud in Saudi Arabia and Loay Alshareef in the United Arab Emirates, as a good sign for future diplomacy. 

“This is a very good indication that after the Iran war settles, more and more Arab countries would want to be friendly to Israel,” she said. “That’s why I think there is a very good chance for peace coming, after this war.”

(JTA) — KIRYAT SHMONA, Israel — When sirens once again sounded in this northern Israel town on a recent  Thursday, Ala Ghassan, a paramedic trainee with Magen David Adom, gazed up at the sky with concern.

Pausing for only a few seconds to check for incoming missiles or outgoing interceptors, Ghassan, wearing an MDA flak jacket and helmet, raced toward the shelter located in the basement of the MDA’s Kiryat Shmona station.

The day before, Hezbollah coordinated with Iran to launch a strike on northern Israel, firing more than 200 missiles in the span of just a few hours. Since Hezbollah joined the conflict on March 2, it has launched more than 3,500 rockets, missiles and drones at Israel. Multiple Israelis have been killed, including a woman on the verge of being married on Wednesday and a man in Nahariya on Thursday.

The assault on the border region has ignited sharp anger from some local leaders, who have demanded that the Israeli government come up with a better strategy to protect residents. But inside the shelter, Ghassam, 21 and on the job for only weeks, was focused only on the job at hand, waiting to learn where he would be dispatched to assess damage and treat victims.

Ghassam recounted why he had decided to join Israel’s volunteer emergency response service. “Seeing what they did in Majdal Shams is why I am here,” he said.

He recalled how, during Israel’s last war with Hezbollah before the negotiated ceasefire in November 2024, a Hezbollah missile struck a soccer field in the Druze town of Majdal Shams, killing 12 children.

“The oldest was only 16,” Ghassan recounted, with tears in his eyes, tugging at his collar to reveal a pin depicting the Druze national colors.

Ghassan is Druze like much of the community in the Golan Heights, which Israel annexed during the 1967 war and which the United States recognized in 2019 as under Israeli sovereignty. The Druze community in the Golan is small and incredibly tight-knit, forbidding intermarriage and maintaining a strong sense of collective identity.

Like Ghassan, most of the paramedics at the Magen David Adom station in Kiryat Shmona are either from the community or have lived there for years. They are Druze, Christian and Jewish and range across decades in age.

And they all harbor a shared hope: that as Israel endures yet another war with Hezbollah, “this will be the last,” Omri Hochman, the Kiryat Shmona station director, said hopefully.

Magen David Adom is Israel’s civilian ambulance and emergency response service. Drawing on a network of more than 37,000 employees and volunteers, it has been on the front line of every disaster and conflict response in Israel since it was founded in 1930.

In peacetime, the group functions like a 911 operator, with volunteers listening in on radios to hear about injuries and illnesses near them and dropping everything to respond. MDA volunteers have delivered babies, resuscitated heart attack victims and even and even turned their own homes into field treatment sites on Oct. 7. This year, the group has even launched a mental health service that dispatches both paramedics and psychiatrists to callers facing mental health crises — a desperate need in a country where a third of adults say they need mental health support after years of war.

Now, as missiles, cluster bombs and Hezbollah rockets fall across Israel during the latest two-front war, MDA volunteers are often the first on the scene, treating the injured and assessing the destruction. They unfortunately have years of experience.

“Lessons learned from previous rounds of conflict with Hezbollah and Iran have significantly strengthened our readiness, including improved coordination with security forces,” said deputy spokesperson Nadav Matzner.

Eli has been working with Magen David Adom in Kiryat Shmona for more than 20 years, the first 15 as a volunteer and the last five on staff, as an operations manager. Speaking from behind his desk at the Kiryat Shmona station, Eli, identified only by his first name due to security concerns during wartime, recounted how the whole team had stepped up after the latest round of fighting.

“We usually have two teams operating during any given shift; now we have nine,” Eli said. In addition to drawing from other response centers in quieter parts of the country, he said, local volunteers are pulling double shifts.

Before he completed his three years of training to become a paramedic, Eli was working as a store manager, supporting his wife and their five children. But after his father died of a heart attack, Eli recalled, “I didn’t know how to do CPR. I vowed that I would never be in a position like that again.”

The rest of the staff at MDA in Kiryat Shmona — mostly volunteers — have also been working double shifts since the start of the war. When asked how he finds time to sleep, or to be with his five children, one of whom is currently serving in the army in Lebanon, Eli said, “I sleep, well, sometimes.”

“Right now, most of what we’re seeing are injuries of elderly residents on their way to the shelter,” said Eli, who himself served in a combat battalion in Lebanon during Israel’s occupation of the south in the 1980s. “But it’s only going to get worse from here, and like the last war with Hezbollah, we expect most injuries to be from shrapnel.”

There is a severe lack of shelters in northern Israel, something that is front of mind for residents. Only about 40% of homes in the city are equipped with safe rooms. Maya Gazbo, another volunteer with MDA in Kiryat Shemona, recounted how many of the town’s elderly residents have simply given up on going to public shelters, as they are too far away and mobility issues make it nearly impossible.

Others who try to make it end up injuring themselves on the way, which constitutes a significant portion of MDA’s calls in the city.

After the last round of evacuations in 2024, which left residents living either in government-funded hotels or with family members away from the front lines for more than a year, many did not return, leaving the community fractured, according to Hochman.

Since the start of the war, Magen David Adom in Kiryat Shmona has had a team of paramedics on standby at a location within a kilometer of Lebanon’s border — at a site that cannot be identified due to security concerns — in case there is a mass-casualty event requiring the evacuation of wounded soldiers.

On the way into the kibbutz, the roads were empty. Few residents venture out of their homes after dark due to the pattern of missile fire from Hezbollah directed at both civilian centers and Israeli military bases around Mount Meron.

Arriving at what used to be a municipal office for the kibbutz, the team immediately entered the shelter. The former government office, largely deserted due to the war, displayed pictures from the kibbutz’s early era, with members holding both assault rifles and farming implements.

Safa Aburafa, 32, is something of a veteran, having worked with Magen David Adom in Kiryat Shmona for more than five years. He has been showing Ghassan the ropes and providing comfort during wartime.

Aburafa set up a command-and-control station in the basement of the shelter, waiting for incoming calls from MDA dispatchers. Periodically, outgoing fire from an Israeli artillery installation sounded and, occasionally, the sound of interceptors shooting down drones launched by Hezbollah.

Aburafa recalled treating dozens of wounded Israeli civilians in the north in the aftermath of Hezbollah missile attacks. He said the work has grown harder this time around, as Israelis who have already lived through one war with Hezbollah are growing accustomed to the conflict and, in many cases, choosing not to go to the shelter.

“Lebanon is right there, and by the time the alarm sounds, residents have just seconds to make it to the shelter,” Eli said, gesturing toward the border. “They have to go right away, but we’re seeing that so many don’t.”

Eli explained that MDA has direct lines of communication with both the police and the army, and during wartime those channels become even more important. There was concern after Oct. 7 that Hezbollah would launch a similar cross-border attack, so contingency plans were built to prevent such an eventuality.

So far, the war has claimed the lives of more than a dozen Israelis and injured many more. The work continues for MDA.

“So far, things have been intense, a challenge for all of us, but we’ve been preparing for this since Oct. 7, and it didn’t catch us off guard,” Eli said.

(JTA) — BUENOS AIRES — As Argentina marks the 50th anniversary of the 1976 military coup, a lesser-known aspect of the dictatorship is gaining attention: the disproportionate number of Jews among the disappeared. 

Estimates suggest that as many as 1,900 Jews were abducted, tortured and murdered by the military junta during the six-year Dirty War, when many sources say 30,000 people were disappeared. Depending on the source, Jews represented 5% to 8% of the total, even though Jews made up less than 1% of Argentina’s population at the time.

That grim history is being explored in educational initiatives by Argentina’s Jewish community, aimed at younger generations and focused on understanding how the dictatorship operated and the disproportionate suffering it inflicted on Jews.

“The Jews were subjected to a particular form of treatment that resulted in greater brutality on the part of the repressive forces,” according to a new curriculum released by the education department of AMIA, the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. “The experience of Jewish Argentines who were victims of state terrorism was marked by a strong antisemitic imprint among many members of the task forces.” 

The AMIA project includes meetings between Jewish youth and relatives of the Jewish “disappeared,” as well as visits to memorial sites. Some 1,000  students are expected to take part this month. 

A parallel digital project, Eduiot (“Testimonies”), documents the stories of Jewish victims of the military dictatorship and includes meetings between relatives of the disappeared and high school students.  

The materials rely on personal testimonies to explain the human impact of the dictatorship and to put individual stories in the broader historical context.

Eduiot includes the story of Fernando Ruben Brodsky, a 22-year-old student who disappeared in 1979, including accounts from relatives who continue to seek answers. His mother, Sarah Brodsky, shares accounts of her son, a psychology student and kindergarten teacher who was abducted from his home on Aug. 8 and never seen again.

The testimonials relate how security forces subjected Jews to antisemitic abuse when they were kidnapped or detained, including Nazi language and symbols and “special” interrogations reserved for Jews.

The anniversary comes amid renewed debate over how Argentina interprets the dictatorship. President Javier Milei’s government has called for a broader account that also includes victims of left-wing guerrilla violence, which some suggest is a way to minimize the crimes of the dictatorship. Milei and other voices close to the government have also questioned the 30,000-victim figure, promoting a lower number (often 9,000).

Under the junta, the military and state security forces  targeted suspected left-wing sympathizers, including students, unionists, journalists and activists.

In 1979, Jewish advocacy groups such as the Anti‑Defamation League expressed grave concern over the disappearances, focusing on the Jewish victims, and Jewish families in Argentina and abroad helped compile lists of the missing. According to an ADL official at the time, “Jews are not specifically targeted as Jews. However, the security agents tend to be suspicious of Jews.” 

The best-known Jewish target of the state was journalist Jacobo Timerman, who published a left-leaning newspaper, La Opinion. In 1977, the generals who ruled Argentina shut down the paper and imprisoned Timerman. Among other things, Timerman was accused of masterminding a plot to establish a Jewish homeland in the remote Patagonia region of southern Argentina.  

He survived, and in his 1981 memoir, “Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number,” he recounted how he was subjected to torture during his 2 1/2 years in confinement.

According to Eduiot, Jewish advocacy for the disappeared “proved effective in bringing early attention to human rights violations.” The U.S. Congress launched investigations, and in a 1978 article in Le Monde, novelist and Holocaust survivor Marek Halter compared the persecution of Argentine Jews to Nazi-era atrocities.

The Eduiot site includes photographs and audiovisual material, and features the accounts of parents, siblings, cousins, nephews and nieces of Jews persecuted and disappeared under the dictatorship. 

“Because every testimony matters and holds great value,” according to its website. “Because these dark episodes of our history must never be repeated, and because we want each of the disappeared to have a space of remembrance on this site, helping families sustain their memory and uphold the call for justice.”

The JCC of San Francisco celebrated the opening of its newly renovated Kanbar Hall with a March 19 appearance by comedian Sarah Silverman, filling every one of the 438 plush seats and even drawing the mayor, who gave a little speech.

Mayor Daniel Lurie, introduced by JCC CEO Paul Geduldig as a graduate of the JCC preschool, started by joking to the audience. “I think I know all 438 of you,” he said, before going on to hail the $2.5 million, 18-month renovation and the promise of the JCC as a premier cultural destination for all of San Francisco and beyond. 

Silverman, 55, is a taboo-breaking, award-winning comic, actor and political activist who can easily charm any Jewish crowd. She chose a fellow Jewish comic to interview her onstage: Robby Hoffman, 36, who has gained national notice for her recurring role on the HBO show “Hacks.”

The event was billed as a “conversation” — one that Hoffman largely dominated with hyper, in-your-face comic quips, taking Jewish overtalking to new levels. Silverman, who is accustomed to that Jewish cultural tick, seemed fine with it.

After an hour of banter between the two, with Hoffman asking unserious questions — “Do you remember meeting me?” “What do you think heaven is?” “Shower or bath?” — audience members had a chance to ask their own questions, which produced some of the evening’s more interesting exchanges. 

One woman asked the comedian about her sister, Rabbi Susan Silverman, who lives with her family in Israel. “My family is in bomb shelters five times a day,” Silverman said, her voice breaking. “It’s very hard.”

A man asked, “As a Democrat, how do you navigate feeling abandoned by your own party on antisemitism and Jewish concerns while still believing in democratic values?” (His question got enthusiastic applause.)

“It’s disheartening,” Silverman said, “because as liberal Jews we stand side by side with every ‘other-other.’ And when the other-others don’t stand with us, it’s very painful. I have friends who are posting things that just break my heart, and I don’t know what to say. I don’t say anything. And I’ve never been afraid to speak out. Never. There’s so much misinformation to combat, and there are so many truths to hold as true. It’s madness, and I don’t know what the solution is, and I don’t know exactly how to navigate it, other than to touch grass.”

Kanbar Hall is named after benefactor Maurice Kanbar, the late inventor and entrepreneur who gave generously to the JCCSF. His gifts total $10 million, including an endowment that just grew by $2 million after a new gift from Kanbar’s estate that was announced at the event. 

The upgrades, which the JCCSF calls a “generational investment in Jewish cultural excellence and pride,” include an immersive surround-sound system, a giant projection screen, improved acoustics, graded theater seating and cosmetic improvements.

The JCC also recently announced a partnership with the Jewish Film Institute, which will bring the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival to Kanbar Hall from July 17 to 26 and run programs there throughout the year. The closing weekend of the San Francisco International Film Festival will also take place in the new theater in early May. 

The San Jose City Council sidestepped calls from local activists to divest from Israel-linked companies during its meeting Tuesday. Instead, the council took up a proposal to unwind investments in companies linked to immigration enforcement. That measure failed.

Before the vote, a scene unfolded in the council chambers that has become familiar in cities across the Bay Area, particularly since Oct. 7, 2023, as about 60 people rose to speak during what ordinarily would have been a routine review of the city’s investment portfolio.

The Silicon Valley branch of the Democratic Socialists of America and a group called San Jose Against War had launched a petition calling for the city to divest from five companies targeted by the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement — Caterpillar, Honeywell, Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet, the parent company of Google — that the activists said are complicit in “Israel’s genocide against Palestine.”

The petition had over 2,300 signatures as of Wednesday.

San Jose does not hold stocks in individual companies, but corporate bonds.

Pro-Palestinian activists, some wearing kaffiyehs and holding signs, came to the meeting to implore the council to divest from the companies because of their ties to Israel. They also pointed to contracts with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement amid the federal agency’s immigration crackdown, naming Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet.

On the other side of the debate, many speakers argued that such a divestment plan would harm the city’s bottom line and have little impact on national policies or geopolitics. A number of Jewish and Israeli speakers said the activists were unfairly demonizing Israel in a way that contributes to a dangerous threat environment for Jews.

“I hear people talking about justice, rights,” said a middle-age man wearing a white button-down shirt who identified himself as Venezuelan-born and said he works in San Jose. “Should San Jose divest from Mexico and China? How about the drug trafficking problem?”

Describing the divestment plan as “misguided,” “ridiculous” and “fake,” he said, “it is designed to hurt one country and one people.”

“There is nothing divisive about standing against a genocide that our tax dollars are paying for,” said a woman wearing a red T-shirt reading SURJ, an acronym for the group Showing Up for Racial Justice. “Please divest from these companies and free Palestine.”

In recent years, BDS efforts have had some success in Bay Area cities. In 2024, Hayward narrowly voted to unwind its investments in Intel, Chevron, Caterpillar and Hyundai after efforts by pro-Palestinian activists. Months later, Richmond also voted to divest from Israel-linked companies. In December 2024, Alameda County treasurer Henry Levy sold $32 million in Caterpillar bonds because of the company’s ties to the Israeli military.

But in San Jose, the story ended differently. The council chose not to consider Israel or the politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in its investment decisions at all.

Instead, two council members proposed that the city sunset its investments tied to Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft because of their links to ICE. They cited a January article in Forbes, which reported that under the current presidential administration, ICE had ordered tens of millions of dollars worth of Microsoft and Amazon products and spent $530,000 on Google Cloud products.

“We’re not motioning to divest from Israel or for getting involved with foreign countries,” said Peter Ortiz, who alongside fellow council member Rosemary Kamei proposed cutting investments in ICE-linked companies. 

“Companies can choose who they do business with,” Ortiz said. “When those choices involve profiting from terrorizing our residents, there should be consequences.”

The ICE proposal failed on a 4-4 vote. Opponents described the proposal as difficult to implement and potentially harmful to the city’s finances. Some council members noted that San Jose municipal employees use Microsoft technology and that the city has no plans to revisit its own million-dollar contract.

Ortiz earlier had noted that many of the speakers on the Israeli-Palestinian issue had addressed an issue that wasn’t even being considered by the council that day.

The Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area commended the council in a statement for resisting calls to “insert international affairs into the city’s investment policy.”

“Actions that single out Israel unfairly stigmatize Jewish constituents and run counter to San José’s commitment to fostering a safe, inclusive, and vibrant community for all,” the JCRC said in a statement.

When members of Peninsula Temple Beth El in San Mateo wanted to take a stand against the federal government’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants, they contacted local nonprofits already working on the issue to ask what they needed. 

The answer: money, attorneys and Spanish speakers. 

“We didn’t have all that,” said PTBE member Nancy Bott. “But we realized we have a school, Fiesta Gardens International, right near us, mostly Spanish-speaking. Could we support them?”

The week before classes began in August, Bott visited the school and spoke with the vice principal, who told her about four dangerous intersections that children regularly cross. There was money to pay for crossing guards at only one of them, the vice principal said. Could the synagogue provide others? 

Well, yes, it could. Bott organized a team of volunteers who each serve as crossing guards one morning a week, from 7:45 a.m. until classes start at 8:30. 

The volunteers serve a second function as well: They act as lookouts in case U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents ever show up. “Our job is to stay calm and notify the school, so they can go into lockdown,” Bott said. So far, that hasn’t happened, but the volunteers are ready.

Bott was describing her synagogue’s program during a March 11 webinar organized by the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area. “Jewish Values in Action: Supporting Immigrants Across the Bay Area” featured speakers from four Bay Area Reform synagogues who presented the actions their congregations are taking. They include:

• Raising money to pay legal fees for undocumented immigrants. 
• Accompanying people to immigration court to help them navigate the legal system. 
• Creating a new food bank open in the evenings. 
• “Adopting” an immigrant family. 

And, of course, the volunteers continue to serve as crossing guards outside a school with 83% Latino enrollment.

“The school and parents have been demonstrably thankful for our presence,” Bott said. On March 23, school administrators and the PTA formally thanked the PTBE volunteers with an appreciation breakfast.

“We may not be solving a huge problem, but we are interacting with a community that is scared and letting them know they are not alone,” Bott said. 

“Immigration is at the forefront of the national and local conversation,” said Jessica Blitchok, JCRC’s director of community partnerships, as she welcomed the online audience on March 11. 

‘Regardless of legal status’

Noting that increased federal enforcement of immigration policies has increased fear among a vulnerable population, Blitchok outlined the Jewish values around helping the stranger embodied in the JCRC’s 2025 policy statement on the topic. Overall, the lengthy policy “calls for an immigration system that ensures the dignity, safety, and rights of all individuals — regardless of legal status.”

Blitchok said the webinar would highlight concrete actions being taken by local synagogues to live out these values. 

“Many people who want to help ask a simple question: Where do I begin?” she said. “By sharing these initiatives … we hope to illuminate the breadth of work underway, and to inspire others to find their own pathways for involvement.”

Rabbi Aaron Torop described the food bank organized by his congregation, Temple Isaiah in Lafayette. It exists alongside another food bank in a heavily immigrant neighborhood but is the only one open in the evenings. Some synagogue volunteers stock the goods and hand out food, while others buy and deliver groceries to families unable or too frightened to come to the food bank in person. 

Another Temple Isaiah project works with a local church to send volunteers to act as a physical presence at a Home Depot in Concord where many immigrants gather to look for work, putting them at risk of ICE raids. Although the nation’s attention focused on the ICE surge in Minneapolis earlier this year that led to the shooting deaths of two Americans, increased raids have continued across the country, including in California.

“We are the eyes and ears on the outside,” Torop said, explaining that direct services like food banks need to be complemented by the “slow work to create safe conditions in a neighborhood.” 

How to start

Synagogues that want to get involved should go through several steps before taking action, Torop and the other speakers said.

First, find out who wants to volunteer, assess their skills and mobility levels (not everybody can stand on a street corner, Bott noted) and determine whether they want to give money or provide direct service. On top of that, Torop pointed out, find what level of risk volunteers are willing to face. 

“The vast majority of opportunities have been 100 percent safe, but the risk is still out there,” he said, particularly for programs that involve volunteers warning immigrants of an ICE raid, which can implicate the volunteers in “obstructive” activity. 

“Still,” Torop added, “whatever risk I face, it’s riskier for those I’m helping.”

Torop also noted the importance of working with organizations already helping local immigrants. “They’ve done this work for decades. They have the experience,” he said. “There’s no need to reinvent the wheel.”

Stewart Florsheim spoke for Temple Sinai in Oakland, where he is co-founder of the Immigrant Advocates Work Group, established in September. 

He said that after President Donald Trump’s first inauguration in 2017, Sinai “affirmed our solidarity with undocumented immigrants.” Sinai explored becoming a sanctuary synagogue, he said, but realized it did not have the physical facilities, such as showers, to do so. 

Motivated by ICE raids

Last year, motivated by increased violence during ICE raids, Sinai’s Immigrant Advocates Work Group was created. It runs educational events, partners with local nonprofits such as Friends of  La Pena Immigrant Rights and sends out a monthly digest to 80 interested synagogue members listing volunteer opportunities.

Eight families at Sinai recently “adopted” an immigrant family, he said, working with the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity’s Nueva Esperanza Accompaniment Team to “walk alongside” the family for six months to help find attorneys, organize needed documents, enroll in English classes and locate food banks and other resources, for example.

Florsheim also acts as a volunteer court navigator, showing up in immigration court once a month to help people seeking to remain in the U.S. The volunteer work is part of an initiative organized by the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity and the Contra Costa Immigrant Rights Alliance. 

“If they come with kids, we give them books so they have something to do,” he said. “When they hear ‘next steps,’ we make sure they understand what that means. We tell them about low-cost resources available to them.” Afterward, the volunteer connects the client with an on-call attorney to provide vetted legal help. “Many of them get scammed,” he said.

Fewer immigrants are showing up in court to support their peers, Florsheim said. “The courtroom used to be full to capacity, but now it’s pretty empty. People are scared to go.”

Suzan Berns spoke for Congregation Rodef Sholom in San Rafael, which organized its Immigrant Rights Team in 2017 to help undocumented immigrants and then reinforced that effort after the 2024 election. 

Immigrants, many of them Latinos, make up about 20 percent of Marin County, according to U.S. Census data. The synagogue has hosted “know your rights” training sessions, partnered with local nonprofits in the field and participated in a trip to the U.S.-Mexican border to better understand what goes on there, she said. 

Fundraising to aid immigrants

The team also set up an Immigrant Rights Legal Fund to raise money for legal fees, which “we recognized was the biggest need,” she said. The fund helps Marin County immigrants, including for those seeking permanent status, citizenship or release from detention. Giving money is a way that people who can’t offer direct service can still be involved, Berns said. 

Since January 2025, the fund has raised $11,746 and used $4,350 of it to pay for attorneys. The fund helped one 19-year-old undocumented immigrant who arrived in Marin County as an unaccompanied minor and couldn’t afford an attorney. It also helped a woman whose son was detained when he applied for asylum and got scammed by the first lawyer they hired. 

Most gratifying of all, Berns said, was when the team supported a parent from a nearby school who was detained. “At his trial we filled the courtroom,” she described. “He was released, and the word we got was that it was because of us.” The man will speak at the Rodef Sholom’s Immigrant Rights Shabbat in May.

In closing the webinar, JCRC’s Blitchok reiterated that “meaningful action can take many forms,” be it advocacy, direct action or raising money or awareness. 

“Sometimes it can seem overwhelming, but we all do what we can,” said Florsheim.

“Everybody can do something,” agreed Torop. “Find something you find inspiring and get to it, so we can all be part of creating safer, more inclusive communities.”