Hours before Monday’s expected hostage handover, Tal Shoham, who spent more than 500 days in Hamas captivity, and Ilan Dalal, father of hostage Guy Gilboa-Dalal — with whom Shoham was held — expressed gratitude to both President Donald Trump and, in a rare moment for hostage families, to the Israeli government.

“Thanks to President Trump for making the impossible possible,” Shoham said, alongside Gilboa-Dalal on a Zoom call with reporters.

Shoham said he was “allowing himself to hope” for the release of his fellow captives on Monday, but was also trying to block those feelings, “so I won’t break if it does not happen.”

He added his regret about not being invited to meet Trump. “I wanted to shake his hand and thank him — not only for this deal but for the deal that released me.”

Shoham was abducted from Kibbutz Beeri on Oct. 7 with his wife, two young children and other relatives. The women and children were freed in November 2023, and he was released in February this year.

Meanwhile, Ilan Dalal, whose son was taken hostage by Hamas terrorists from the Nova festival, said the first thing he would do when he encounters Guy after his release was “hug him, smell him and tell him that the nightmare is over.”

But he went on to say that didn’t know “what kind of son I’m going to get back,” citing the last video released of his son, in which he saw “despair in his eyes.”

“We saw him not the way we knew him. We know Guy as he was two years ago, but after he went through two years of suffering, of starvation, of humiliation, both physical and mental abuse, we don’t know how these things are going to affect him,” Dalal said. “I hope that he will not be so harmed that he cannot rebuild his life.”

Shoham spoke at length of his captivity saying that he was “intentionally starved … for sadistic psychological warfare” receiving between 200 and 300 calories a day to share with fellow hostages Guy and Evyatar David — also set to be released on Monday — first, “to make us suffer,” and second “to pressure Israeli society.”

He went on to say that his Hamas captors boasted about stealing humanitarian aid.

“I saw with my own eyes that they stole boxes and boxes and boxes of humanitarian aid from Egypt, from Turkey, from the Emirates, but they didn’t agree to give us any of this food in the tunnels,” he said.

But after the February release of Eli Sharabi, Or Levy and Ohad Ben Ami, all of whom were severely malnourished, his captors began giving “much, much more food,” he said, adding that it was dangerous because they were suffering from malnutrition. “It could have killed us.”

Shoham said his time in captivity included “a lot of torture and cruelty.” Asked to describe one of the worst moments, Shoham declined, saying “disconnecting from the experience” helped him keep on fighting.

“I don’t want to go there,” he added.

Citing unnamed sources, Israel’s Channel 12 News on Sunday evening said the government has assessed that some of the living hostages set to be freed on Monday have undergone torture.

The Red Cross reported that it had seen some of the hostages and found some in serious condition, according to Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman.

Shoham described his captors as “so brainwashed and full of hate” but for some of them, it didn’t stem from religious motives.

“Some of them [were] religious, but some were only there because this is the popular thing to do. They can take all sadistic thoughts and actions not just against Israelis but also Gazans.” He recounted one incident he had witnessed, in which a Hamas operative shot a Gazan man in the knees because he “looked suspicious,” and later, when the injured man was being attended to by an ambulance, he was executed outright because “they decided that he should die.”

There were moments of humanity, he said — noting that Islam has rules for how to treat captives — but they were “very rare,” and cited instances in which his captors brought him smuggled food and a message from his wife.

He went on to say that most of them were “not soldiers.”

“One of the guards was a first-grade teacher, another was a lecturer at a university, and another was a doctor. These are normal people becoming terrorists,” he said.

Captivity, Shoham said, “forced me to go inward.”

“Only a few people mattered to me — my family and a few close friends,” he said, adding that hearing of his wife and children’s release on the 50th day of their captivity was “tremendous” in helping him get through his ordeal.

The experience also intensified his faith. “I have a lot of gratitude for life. My faith in humanity and in God only increased. It is much more spiritual and religious than before.”

He credited the state with steady support once he came home. “I felt a lot of support from the government — I have a psychologist, financial support — anything that I needed was taken care of. I personally felt a lot of gratitude to my country in these days.”

Asked if he felt any misgivings towards the government for not securing a deal earlier, Ilan Dalal also struck a conciliatory tone.

“Of course we would have wanted it to be much earlier,” he said. “But the Israeli government also needs to think about the security of Israel. Probably there were a series of processes that needed to be completed before we got to this point.”

He described the psychological toll he and his family had suffered over the past two years. “Sometimes I woke up in great despair,” he said. “Sometimes I had no strength to get out of bed. But then I remembered my son in the tunnels. That he’s counting on us to be his voice. We didn’t have the option to break down.”

When Abe Kugielsky first began photographing the Hasidic Jewish community in Borough Park, Brooklyn, in 2010, he was an outsider with a camera, met with resistance from a community unaccustomed to being documented.

But by 2017, he had amassed a bank of roughly 50,000 photographs, and decided it was time to start posting his images to an Instagram account he called “Hasidim In USA.”

Today, his account has drawn 80,000 followers curious for a glimpse inside a traditionally private world. And this month, it has also landed him a place in Humans of New York’s “Dear New York” exhibition in Grand Central’s Vanderbilt Hall. The free exhibition, curated by Brandon Stanton of the online photo sensation Humans of New York and including dozens of local photographers, runs until Oct. 19.

By day, Kugielsky, who is 45 and identifies as Modern Orthodox, runs a Judaica antique auction house in Cedarhurst, Long Island. But his photography, and efforts to gain inroads in the Hasidic community, have become his true passion.

“Judaica is my full-time job, but I will close shop whenever I feel like I need a day off to go,” said Kugielsky. “It’s very therapeutic to me when I go out to shoot, I’m in my own little bubble, my own zone.”

This interview was condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

JTA: What first drew you to photographing the Hasidic communities in New York?

Kugielsky: When I moved to Brooklyn after we got married, my wife had a job in Borough Park. I would drive her to work every day. I had started street photography as a hobby back in Israel a little bit, and then got married and I let go of it. But when I started visiting Borough Park every morning, and I was getting that Roman Vishniac vibe by seeing the scenes, and I figured, I’ll pick up a camera and start documenting something that’s been untouched in New York.

It’s been very popular in Israel. There’s so many photography books on Orthodox life in Jerusalem, but there’s nothing about Hasidic life in America. There’s one book from like 1974, a small book with some photos, but that’s about it. It’s really very little. So I felt like it was an untouched niche, and I picked up a camera and I started photographing.

How do you build trust with your subjects in a community that is often described as insular?

To see someone walking on Borough Park with a camera taking pictures is not common. It’s not Mea Shearim [the Jerusalem neighborhood] where we have tourists and Americans and photographers. This is very uncommon, so there was a lot of fear of resistance, and of course, the resistance came. So it started off really more in hiding from distance, and over time, I built trust in the community to a point where they celebrate me.

I made it my goal to post in a very positive light, either a positive caption or a positive scene or a positive story, to show them I’m not here to bring out what everyone else has been doing. I realized over the years that it’s really rooted a lot in generational trauma, where, whenever media came into Borough Park or Williamsburg, it was always for a negative story, and that’s where the resistance really came from. So over time, when they recognized that my work is not with that goal, they started to appreciate it more and more.

Can you tell me more about the response from the Hasidic community to your work?

I started off with an article in a local Yiddish magazine, and then a couple of months later, another article and I came out publicly with my name, my identity, so people started recognizing me more. And over time, I started getting more and more positive feedback.

I remember a woman in Williamsburg stopped me once, and she said, “I want to tell you that your photos made me fall in love again with my own culture.” So it really had a certain impact on the community, recognizing that these photos tell a positive story. It tells the story of the community that no one else does in a positive light.

It really shifted to the point where, if I walk down Williamsburg, people stop me and ask me for a selfie, and people will DM me and say, ‘Hey, there’s an event going on here, please come down and photograph.” My goal was to go in deeper and deeper, more and more intimate, and I’ve gotten there. Especially this past summer, we had some invites into family life, which is a whole new level that I’ve been really trying to get to.

What kinds of reactions from the public to your work have surprised or challenged you?

Of course, I get a lot of antisemitic comments from time to time with DMs. Anyone who posts anything Jewish nowadays gets them, but I’ve had a lot of interesting positive feedback from non-Jews worldwide. I’ve had people in Iran reach out to me, and I’ve heard from people in Middle Eastern countries, in Germany, Poland. I think they love the concept where they can look into another culture, have a window into another culture, something they don’t get to see.

Do you have a favorite image from the exhibit, and what makes it stand out to you?

I have one great image that I really, really love. This was a silver shop in Borough Park I walked into and I asked the owner, an older Hasidic Jew, if I can photograph him, and his response is, “What do I need it for?”

I have an album on my phone with photos I downloaded from Brooklyn Public Library, old images from Williamsburg taken by a photographer in 1964, and I figured, let me show him what it looks like looking back at photos from 50 years ago. I started showing him on my phone. He was scrolling through the photos, and I said, look how beautiful it is to look at pictures from 50 years ago.

But then he froze on a certain picture, and his demeanor changes, and he goes, “This is my wife.” He found a picture of his wife and his first newborn son from 50 years ago in those photos, so I captured that moment where he’s really reminiscing about those years.

Humans of New York has drawn criticism for a series focused on aid workers in Gaza as well as for featuring a member of Neturei Karta, a small anti-Zionist sect of the Orthodox community. Was that something you thought about before deciding to participate? 

I was tagged when he posted his request for people to submit. I didn’t follow him, it’s just not really my style of work, he’s more storytelling. I went into his page, and I saw all these posts, I wasn’t sure what to make of it.

The vibe that I got was I didn’t feel an antisemitism there. I felt like he was more going with the trend, showcasing Palestinians from Gaza or Neturei Karta, more from a place of ignorance.

I believe a lot of New Yorkers, a lot of Americans, a lot of people worldwide, don’t really know and understand the conflict. It’s just in style now to hate, and it’s in style now to side with one side or the other without really understanding.

I didn’t give it a lot of hope when I submitted my photos, and I was actually surprised that he chose my photos to be included, and throughout my conversations with him, I understood that he really doesn’t understand much of the conflict.

Have you received any critical feedback about your involvement in this project?

Very, very little. I think one or two people commented like, why would you do this? But for me, A, It’s an opportunity for me, for my work, to showcase my work out there more, and, B, I thought it was so important to have a representation of Jewish life, or Hasidic life, Orthodox life, in such an important exhibition.

What are you hoping people take away when they encounter your Grand Central exhibit?

What I’m expecting people to take away is really to see the humanistic side of this culture. People could be living literally a block away from the community, and not really know the community, and not understand them.

I’m hoping that this gives them a little bit more of a humanistic view of the Hasidic community, where they live, their life, their culture, their religion. After all, we’re all human, we all coexist in the same city.

The past two years have been particularly challenging for Jewish college students. Our campuses, which should be places of curiosity and critical exchange, have too often become arenas of polarization. As upperclassmen, Ari at Harvard and Maya at McGill, we have watched peers feel trapped between two extremes: to take a strident side on nuanced conflicts, or to stay silent and withdraw from the conversation all together. Charlie Kirk’s recent assassination has further intensified the polarizing atmosphere. Frighteningly, some have seen his death as proof that civil discourse and free speech are impossible to achieve.

For students like us who care deeply about pluralism, this climate has felt especially isolating.

Even before Kirk’s assassination a number of university administrators were calling for pluralism and increasing investments in dialogue training. In fact, Barnard College President Laura Ann Rosenbury recently wrote an op-ed in the New York Times describing her college’s efforts to offer “courses and programs on civil discourse and dialogue.” While we’re heartened by this trend, we also recognize this isn’t the norm across universities and we’ve also come to see its limits. A mandatory workshop on “how to speak to one another” may help students avoid pitfalls but skills alone are not enough to solve the problem of polarization.

What’s missing on campuses across the country are sustained spaces where students learn to hold disagreement within a community. Over the past year, both of us have found great comfort in Jewish learning, through which we are reminded that intellectual and communal life can be most rich and vibrant when practicing the ethic of pluralism.

Jewish life has always included debate, diversity, and dialogue. The Talmud preserves arguments not for their resolution, but because the disagreements themselves are valuable. As our sages put it, a dispute for the sake of heaven is one that sustains community even when consensus is impossible. Disagreement can be a bond, not a rupture.

What Jewish wisdom has helped us recognize is that the key to pluralism is prioritizing relationships over the need to be right.  We find ourselves concerned that this message is getting lost in the rhetoric on campus and in Jewish spaces when, all too often, the response to disagreement is to throw more “facts” at the other side, to win the debate.

Last school year, we each attempted the Sisyphean task of getting those who disagree on campus into one room to no avail. It was exhausting. No matter how close we got to encouraging open conversations, at the last moment, a social media post, national or international news event or protest would dissuade participants that such a conversation was desirable or even worthwhile. The trauma and upheaval of the Israel-Hamas war further enhanced a sense of  fear, grief, alienation and anger among and between our Jewish peers.

What renewed our spirits and resolve was jointly participating in a program created for Jewish college students called Campus Commons. The experience of being in a mixed group of Jewish students from across North America — politically and religiously — was inspiring and enlivening, creating a trusting community with peers who, back on our college campuses, circulate in different spheres from ours. It meant that when tensions naturally surfaced – not through force or as an illustrative exercise — they were met with care rather than defensiveness.

Being in a pluralistic Jewish community and studying Jewish texts together gave us the courage and self-awareness to examine our own personal barriers in conversation. For the first time in a long time, we felt able to express pain without being dismissed or misunderstood.

College campuses have the potential to, once again, become spaces where students can cultivate meaningful relationships before diving into debate. This is especially true of Jewish spaces on campus which are in desperate need of a relationship reset. More resources should be given to trusted campus professionals and peer leaders who can serve as relationship-builders on campus and are best positioned to foster pluralism in these environments. This includes Jewish professionals and Jewish student leaders, who are uniquely situated to cultivate pluralistic environments and initiatives, both within the Jewish community and beyond it.

At Harvard Hillel, Ari started the “Oy-ntology Club,” a Friday-morning bagels-and-texts group on Jewish ethics. The series opened with thorny but relatable topics — how to hold close friends accountable without becoming responsible for them — and, after a few months of steady meetings and goodwill, turned to the morality of the Israel-Hamas war. This format worked and was rooted in two practices gleaned from the Campus Commons experience: 1) chevruta, or paired Jewish study, lets students meet through a shared text, giving a common entry point and slowing reactive takes; 2) beginning on common ground and, as trust builds, easing into harder questions. Regardless of the format, technology-free and off-the-record spaces do make a difference. When students can try on views without fearing they’ll be broadcast online, diversity in perspective and the potential to become friends is much easier to come by.

We hope university administrators and community leaders will go beyond “dialogue skills,” giving students opportunities to deepen relationships and build community. Our participation in a Jewish program that prioritizes pluralism and exposed us to Jewish learning related to the values of pluralism, restored our hope that things can be different; we can act together without needing to think alike.

Hundreds of thousands of Israelis poured into Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square on Saturday night in what everyone present was hoping would be the final vigil on behalf of the hostages taken to Gaza two years ago.

Massive posters showing the 48 hostages expected to be returned imminently, 20 alive, under the terms of a ceasefire struck on Friday, surrounded the square. Demonstrators carried signs thanking U.S. President Donald Trump, who pressed for the deal. And hostage families described their excitement at finally being able to reunite with their loved ones — and their grief at preparing to receive their loved ones’ remains.

Some of the stars of the rally were three American Jews — Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump — who played a role in pushing negotiations between Israel and Hamas over the finish line.

Witkoff was visibly emotional. “I dreamed of this night. It’s been a long journey. This is the most powerful sight,” Trump’s Middle East envoy told the crowd. “All of our hearts beating as one.”

When Witkoff thanked Trump, loud cheers resounded. But when he mentioned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the crowd booed. Multiple times, he had to ask to be allowed to go on before saying, “I was in the trenches with the prime minister, believe me, he was a very important part.”

Many Israelis blame Netanyahu for prolonging the war and the hostages’ captivity, a sentiment that independent reporting has supported and that Trump reportedly expressed privately at times in the course of negotiating an end to the war.

Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, followed, praising Witkoff, thanking the Israeli soldiers who fought in Gaza and describing his own reaction to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack. Kushner, who has significant business interests and relations across the Middle East, also was the only speaker to mention Gazans who also experienced two years of war after Hamas attacked Israel from Gaza.

“October 7, for me, was a shattering day,” he said. “Since then, my heart has not been complete, and it’s been a tremendous burden that I felt to see these hostages come home, to see their families get the closure they deserve and to end this nightmare – and also to see the suffering end for the people in Gaza, who, for most of them, were experiencing this through no fault of their own, other than being born into a situation that was horrific.”

Kushner’s wife, Trump’s daughter Ivanka, also addressed the crowd, saying that her father had a message he wanted to pass on. “The president wanted me to share, as he has with so many of you personally, that he sees you, he hears you, he stands with you always, always,” she said.

Trump repeatedly cited the crowd sizes in Tel Aviv as evidence that the Israeli people wanted to make a deal to end the war and bring the hostages home. (Polls easily supported the idea.)

The 20 living hostages and some number of deceased hostages are set to be returned on Monday morning, after Hamas said it had amassed them at three points within Gaza.

Earlier in the day, Witkoff had told hostage families that there was concern that Hamas would not be able to locate all of the bodies of the hostages who had been killed. Some family members exhorted the crowd to keep demonstrating until all of the deceased hostages had been returned, too.

And even those who are preparing to reunite with their loved ones after two years said they could not totally celebrate. “This is not a happy event,” Itzik Horn, whose son Eitan is set to be released alive, eight months after his brother Iair was freed, told the crowd. “This is the end of the cursed day in the history of the state — Israeli citizens are returning to their country after being abandoned.”

Sarah Hurwitz calls her first book, “Here All Along,” a “love letter” to Jewish tradition. Describing a journey begun when she worked as a speechwriter at the White House— first for President Barack Obama and later for First Lady Michele Obama — the book was a celebration of her rediscovering Judaism as a thirty-something who grew up with what she describes as a “thin” Jewish identity. 

But if that book was sunny, her new book explores the shadows and storm clouds of Jewish belonging. “As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us,” confronts the challenges of being Jewish at a time of rising antisemitism, a polarizing debate over Israel, and pressures and temptations that keep many Jews from appreciating a tradition that belongs to them. 

Shifting the focus from personal discovery to a host of contemporary issues, “As a Jew” is both a primer and a polemic, explaining Jewish history, texts and practices in order to counter misinformation and inspire readers.

“We need to know our story. We need to know our history. We need to know our traditions,” she said in an interview on Thursday. “We need to know what we love about being Jews, so that when people come to us and they say, ‘Judaism is violent and vengeful and sexist and has a cruel God and is unspiritual,’ we can say that’s not true.”

The book also draws on her recent training and experience as a hospital chaplain, volunteering on the oncology floor of a hospital in the Washington, D.C. area, where she lives. 

Hurwitz, 44, is a graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Law School. She also served as a speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore and in Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. In January, she plans to start training for the rabbinate at the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Beit Midrash for New North American Rabbis.

We spoke at a livestreamed “Folio” event presented by the New York Jewish Week and UJA-Federation of New York. Hurwitz discussed her time in the Obama White House, what she’s learned from meeting with college students struggling with antisemitism, and the challenges of writing a Jewish book in the post-Oct. 7 moment.

Our conversation was edited for length and clarity. To watch the full conversation, go here.

Your first book, “Here All Along,” was about your return to Jewish learning. What hadn’t you said in that first book that you felt compelled to say now? And how does “As a Jew” extend or challenge the earlier journey?

My first very much a love letter to Jewish tradition, and this book is much more of a polemic. That first book really reflected me at the age of 36 rediscovering Jewish tradition, having grown up with this very thin kind of Jewish identity. 

In this new book, I began to really ask the question, why did I see so little of Jewish tradition growing up, why did I have to wait until age 36 to actually discover so much of our tradition? Why was my identity so apologetic, so kind of humiliating and, having grown up in a Christian country, how much of my approach to Judaism was really through a Christian lens? This book really dives into those questions at a time of rising antisemitism, where Jews need to start thinking about these things.

What does it mean to be apologetic? How did the Christian lens distort your understanding of Judaism? 

I certainly believed that Christianity is a religion of love, but Judaism is really a religion of law. And I really did buy that, that ours is a kind of weedy, legalistic, nitpicky tradition with this angry, vengeful god. I mean, that is just classic Christian anti-Judaism. I also used to think this world is carnal, degraded, inferior, kind of gross, and the goal of spirituality was to transcend them. That is not a central Jewish idea at all. That is not what Jewish spirituality is. If you read the Torah, our core sacred text, you’re going to find a great deal about our bodies, but how we treat them, about really contemplating how they are quite sacred. 

You say more than once in your book that you want to “take back the Jewish story.” What does it mean to take back the Jewish story, and from whom or what?

Our story has often been told by others, and you actually see this in this very old story about Jewish power, depravity and conspiracy. You see it in the core story about a group of Jews conspiring to kill Jesus. And you see these themes winding their way through history. That story has been told about Jews for centuries. I want to replace it with our actual story, as told through Jewish texts and traditions.

The alternative you propose, in order for Jews to embrace their own story, is that they embrace the “textline,” which you call “the repository of our Jewish memory, the raw material for the story we tell about who we are.” I am not familiar with “textline” — how does it differ from “text”?

This is actually from [the late Israeli novelist] Amos Oz, and his daughter, historian Fania Oz-Salzberger. They say, “Ours is not a bloodline, it’s a textline.” Jews are racially and ethnically diverse, but our shared DNA, the thing that unites us, is our texts. Sadly, in the early 1800s, as Jews gained citizenship in Europe, there was a decision to assimilate and reshape Judaism to look more like Protestantism — a kind of “Jewish church.” In doing so, we de-emphasized 2,500 years of textual tradition beyond the Torah, which is where much of Jewish wisdom and ritual is found. Reclaiming that textual tradition is critical.

The idea and dilemmas of Jewish power is a theme in your book and incredibly timely, given the debate over Israel’s display of power in Gaza and several other fronts. How does your book approach the moral and spiritual tension of Jews moving from centuries of powerlessness to now having power and a state?

Many Jews today feel distress over the responsibility that comes with power. For 2,000 years, Jews were powerless, blameless victims. The problem with statelessness was that it led to slaughter on a massive scale. Some yearn for that innocence of powerless Jewish life, but I disagree that the cost of millions of deaths was worth it. With power comes moral responsibility. Israel, like all nations, is conceived and maintained in violence. I see the moral complexity, but I do not want to give up the power or the responsibility that comes with it.

After your first book came out, you became a prominent voice in Jewish life. Can you share encounters on the road that shaped your thinking for this book?

First, training as a volunteer hospital chaplain helped me realize the profound, Jewish-centered human experience of accompanying people in moments of illness, grief and death. Second, visiting universities before Oct. 7, 2023, I was stunned by Jewish students asking how I dealt with antisemitism in college. When I said I hadn’t experienced any, the students were shocked. Post-2023, the Gaza war accelerated ugly narratives on social media, which deeply worried me. I also reflected on my first book and realized that the Judaism I grew up with was oddly edited, shaped by our ancestors’ attempts to assimilate for safety — a choice I deeply respect but which left us somewhat “textless.”

How do your chaplaincy experiences relate text to real life?

I volunteer in D.C. hospitals. Being present with people in illness, grief and death is profoundly Jewish. Modern society finds these experiences uncomfortable, but Jewish tradition calls us to accompany mourners, prepare the dead lovingly, and inhabit the thin spaces where life and death blur. This presence, grounded in community, is essential. People often find relief simply in having someone acknowledge reality and speak openly about it.

You started writing this book before Oct. 7. How did the Hamas attacks and the Gaza war influence your writing about peoplehood, empathy and responsibility?

Oct. 7 didn’t change the arguments or themes of my book, but it gave more data points. For decades, Jews in America and Israel lived somewhat disconnected lives. Oct. 7 revealed underlying tensions and reminded us that Jewish identity has always carried conditionality. Some had illusions about a “golden age” of safety in the 1980s and 1990s, but many had faced real threats. The attacks shattered any illusions of security and exposed deeper societal challenges.

You talk about students on campuses being excluded from college clubs and causes because they are Zionist. I found your response intriguing — that Jews again create their own institutions the way they created Jewish hospitals and universities in the early part of the 20th century as a response to exclusion. Do you worry that you are overreacting?

Campuses vary widely. Some departments are excellent; some are hostile. In difficult environments, I advise Jewish students to try dialogue, but if excluded, to create their own spaces — clubs, organizations and initiatives, that are radically inclusive and excellent. Historically, Jews created hospitals, law firms and universities that welcomed anyone committed to excellence and tolerant of Jews. We can do that again. For example, Allison Tombros Korman founded the Red Tent after being ostracized [in the reproductive rights space] for her Zionist beliefs. It funds abortion services for anyone and is inclusive — an inspiring model.

Your book includes a chapter on Israel that aims to counter the accusations that Zionism is colonialist and racist. But you also include criticism of Israel, saying the country is not without its “serious flaws.” How do you navigate the lonely place of being a liberal Zionist today, which I often define as being too Zionist for the liberals and too liberal for many Zionists?  

I navigate it like I navigate being an American: I can criticize, feel frustrated and yet remain committed. Israel is the home of 7 million Jewish siblings. Criticism does not mean abandonment. Many confuse ideology with family obligation, but Israel is our family, and we must stand with it while lovingly correcting its errors. This mirrors my commitment to America.

You were active in a Democratic administration and no doubt have seen the evidence of decreasing support for Israel among Democrats. Was that your experience when you worked in the Obama administration? Is that something you had to push back against?

I think people are a little bit confused about when the Obama administration ended, which was 2017. That was well before this 2023 dark turn, you know, it was a pretty normie administration. I don’t remember a single time in the Obama administration where anything negative was said about Israel. It was a great administration to be a Jew. I started first exploring Judaism when I was working in the White House, and my colleagues were so overwhelmingly proud of me, I could not just [believe] the encouragement they gave me. One time I actually ran into the White House chief of staff, a wonderful guy named Denis McDonough, and he asked me what I was doing for the December vacation, and the answer was, I was going to a weeklong silent Jewish meditation retreat. You don’t tell the chief of staff that you’re doing that, but I did, because I didn’t want to lie, and he just could not have been more proud. 

I now see, unfortunately, an ideology that’s been on the fringes of the left slowly making its way to the mainstream, and that worries me. I don’t think it is outrageous for Democrats to withhold an occasional shipment of weapons to express displeasure with Israel’s policy, but what worries me is that we are in a bigger environment of a real demonization and delegitimization of Israel. 

I’m also really worried about the right. If you look at the data, especially among young men, they’re increasingly antisemitic, increasingly anti-Israel. And what I particularly worry about is that I see President Trump under the guise of fighting antisemitism on campus, engaging in really heavy-handed efforts to defund university campuses. And you can celebrate that. You can say it’s good for Jews, but I disagree, and I also worry about the precedent, that five or 10 years from now, when there is a president with a very different political ideology, who says that “Israel is a terrorist country, Zionism is a terrorist ideology, and I’m going to go and defund every campus that has an active Hillel, because Hillel is a Zionist entity.” We’ve paved that illiberal path, and it’s very easy for someone on the other side to walk down it. 

I also really worry about, on the right, the MAGA ideology that says that a small group of powerful, depraved elites is conspiring to harm you and your family, to vaccinate you, to make your kids trans. It’s a very ugly ideology that is the very structure of antisemitism. The leap between elites and Jews is about a centimeter and Tucker Carlson’s made the leap. It’s got millions of followers. A lot of other people are making the leap.

Your books are, as you’ve said, love letters to Jewish tradition. But often observant Jews, here and in Israel, who are deeply steeped in Jewish text and practice, also embrace views that are illiberal and ultra-nationalist. How do you reconcile their embrace of the “textline,” and the illiberal positions they arrive at?

You are talking about the extremists, like [Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, two far-right Israeli cabinet ministers]. I think they are being quite unfaithful to Jewish tradition. Judaism operates in polarities, holding opposing truths: love the stranger yet remember Amalek; humility and self-esteem; compassion with caution. Extremists claim only one pole, but both are essential. Jewish tradition demands wrestling with these tensions.

And yet those tensions are straining communal ties. How do Jews remain responsible for one another when there are such deep disagreements?

Judaism emphasizes the ethic of family. Even if family members espouse objectionable views, we engage them with tochecha — loving, private rebuke — to correct and guide them. Boundaries must exist for safety, but generally, we strive to keep people at the table, engage with them, and educate them.

A lot of Jewish authors are finding that it is difficult since Oct. 7 to promote their books, especially when they lean heavily into Jewish or Israeli content.  How are you being received, having written a Jewish book in this time and place?

I only do events in Jewish institutions with a very small number of exceptions, so I haven’t been in any bookstores. I’m not really interested in going to bookstores. I want to go to places that have, frankly, good security and where it will be more than 20 people. I will say I’ve been surprised at how little pushback I’ve gotten to my book, because I thought this was a pretty edgy book. You know, I think my first book was pretty soft — like, “yay Judaism!” The second book is a polemic, and I was worried that I would get real pushback, real criticism, real anger. And yet, from the Jewish world, I’ve had Jewish leaders who are more on the right-wing side of the spectrum politically who like it, and leaders who are on the left-wing part of the spectrum who like it. They’ll tell me, “I see your compassion, and I see that you’re really wrestling with the other side, with those who disagree with you.” 

Is there a Jewish text that you kind of live by, or that you really love, or just came across yesterday that really spoke to you this week or in this hour?

There’s so many, but I’ll take one. I’ll just simplify it. In [the Babylonian Talmud, Brachot 5b,] Rabbi A gets sick and then Rabbi B shows up and takes his hands and heals him. But then Rabbi B himself gets sick and Rabbi C shows up and takes Rabbi B’s hand and heals him. And the rabbis studying the story are very confused, because if Rabbi B, who was kind of known as a healer, could heal Rabbi A, then when he got sick himself, why didn’t he just cure himself? Why did he need Rabbi C to come and cure him? 

And the answer that they offer is because “the prisoner cannot get himself out of prison.” I just think that’s a really beautiful story about the ways that we become trapped in our own anxiety, fear, anger, loneliness and really do need other people to come and take our hand and kind of pull us out. I thought about this a lot while writing my book. There’s about 80 people in my acknowledgements who read part or all of this book. And that was very important, because as a writer, I cannot get myself out of the prison of my own biases, my own ignorance, my own narrow views, and so many people reached out, took my hand and said, “What you’re writing is wrong,” or “that’s offensive,” or “you don’t know what you’re talking about.” And they said it very nicely. It was so important to me because I could actually step out and learn.

So I love that story. I think it illustrates something profound about what it means to be human. 

A Jewish man in Missoula, Montana, was assaulted on Oct. 7 by a self-proclaimed “Nazi,” according to the Missoula Police Department.

On Tuesday, the suspect, Michael Cain, 29, got into an argument with the victim who had a visible tattoo of the Star of David on his forearm. Cain asked the victim about his tattoo and allegedly identified himself as a believer in the teachings of the Nazi party.

When the victim, who told Cain he was Jewish, then asked Cain to show him any Nazi-related tattoos on his body, Cain allegedly kicked and punched the victim, who was seated on the ground.

Missoula police then responded to the Poverello Center, a local homeless shelter where the assault took place, and later apprehended Cain who had fled the scene.

While en route to the local detention center, Cain disclosed to the arresting officer that he was a member of the “4th Reich” and said that while he did not attack the victim because of his Jewish identity, he would have if he had been more adamant about his beliefs, according to court documents obtained by local news outlet KGVO.

Cain was charged with felony malicious intimidation or harassment relating to civil or human rights and his bond was set at $50,000.

Montana is home to just under 1,500 Jews out of a general population of over 1.1 million. In 2023, the Anti-Defamation League recorded just 21 antisemitic incidents in the state.

Walking and chewing gum. Nixon and China. Fighting against the British in Palestine while fighting with the British in Europe.

All are cliches signifying two seemingly contradictory actions that are possible — and potentially preferable — to do at the same time. And all were cited this week by Jewish critics of Donald Trump as apt metaphors for what they are doing this week in the wake of Trump’s successful brokering of a ceasefire in the Gaza war.

Jewish Americans are reeling as a president many blame for undermining democracy brokered a deal that appears poised to return the Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. Unlike many jubilant Israelis, some reliably liberal Jews here are having a hard time praising Trump and his team for the kind of diplomatic breakthrough that his Democratic predecessor couldn’t bring about. But they are largely figuring out how to do it.

“It’s important to recognize that the vast majority of American Jews, just as Israelis, want a return of the hostages, and they want this war to end, and if Donald Trump and his team can help to bring that about, they deserve credit for doing so,” said Halie Soifer, the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, the leading Democratic group in the community.

Trump in his second term is deeply unpopular with American Jews. Prior to the announcement of a long-awaited ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, his backing for Israel did not dent the disapproval he draws from a demographic that votes overwhelmingly Democratic.

A poll in April found 72% of Jewish voters disapproved of Trump. A robust majority opposed his signature policies, including deportations and retaliating against political enemies. A majority even opposed his efforts to combat antisemitism.

At the same time, Trump also has not hidden his disdain for legacy Jewish groups: The FBI earlier this month cut off all ties with the Anti-Defamation League, and its director, Kash Patel, likened the group’s tracking of right-wing extremists to terrorism.

Abe Foxman, the former ADL CEO, was appalled by Patel’s actions against his former colleagues and campaigned in 2020 for Joe Biden, the Democrat who ousted Trump after his first term. But he said the community should praise Trump for the peace deal, and he was surprised the praise was not more robust.

“The American Jewish community needs to walk and chew gum at the same time. We should be able to differentiate and say, ‘Thank you, Mr. President’ and ‘No thank you, Mr. President,’” Foxman said in an interview. “He did something so many of us yearned for in the last two years, and he made it happen, and Biden didn’t make it happen.”

Rabbi Jonah Pesner, who leads the Reform movement’s advocacy arm, the Religious Action Center, said there was a Jewish ethical obligation to thank Trump, based on the Jewish imperative to publicly “recognize the good,” hakarat hatov, even if the administration does not reciprocate.

“We would look at it through the lens of Jewish learning and Jewish wisdom,” Pesner said. “We have a president who has done exactly what we asked, bring the hostages home, end the war and the suffering in Gaza, both for the sake of the innocent in Gaza, but also for [Israelis], and get back on a path to a sustainable, lasting peace so that both sides can live in peace.”

That does not mean opposition to Trump’s domestic policies should flag, Pesner said, noting the Reform movement’s activism in opposing the deportations and Trump policies targeting transgender people.

“Our people are in the streets in Los Angeles and Chicago, trying to be a human buffer between troops that are being deployed [to arrest undocumented migrants] and the people who will be impacted,” he said.

Pesner’s predecessor at the RAC, Rabbi David Saperstein, said Trump “deserves to be commended for an extraordinary achievement” – but the Trump administration’s strident hostility to groups that might disagree on some issues made it hard to express. (Earlier this month, Trump shared on social media a meme calling Democrats “THE PARTY OF HATE, EVIL, AND SATAN.”)

Saperstein lamented the passing of an era when Jewish organizations would be comfortable working with a president whose policies they mostly opposed. He recalled being present at the White House, as RAC CEO, when President George W. Bush signed RAC-backed bills on human trafficking, on Sudan and on prison rape.

“While we staunchly supported a number of the efforts of the [Bush] administration, both domestically and in terms of Iraq, one always knew that the White House would accept that dichotomy as a norm of how American politics functions, and wouldn’t stop that from working collegially in places we could find common ground,” Saperstein recalled. “This administration is woefully different.”

Joel Rubin, a deputy assistant secretary of state during the Obama administration, drew two historical analogies to explain why Democrats and Jews should more robustly praise Trump on his Mideast diplomacy: Richard Nixon, who brokered peaceful relations with China while under even as he faced investigation for spying on Democrats, and David Ben-Gurion, who in 1939 said Jews in Palestine should resist British oppression with the same dedication they showed in joining the British in fighting Nazis.

“I think it’s been a very, very difficult thing for Democrats to admit that, you know, Nixon went to China on this one,” said Rubin, who in 2020 was the Jewish community liaison for the presidential campaign of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the de facto leader of progressives.

Trump, Rubin said, was able to do what Biden was not: pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to defy his far-right coalition partners and make a deal by enticing him with unfettered military and diplomatic support.

“Biden didn’t have the leverage to pressure Bibi [Netanyahu], the way that Trump has the leverage to pressure Bibi.” Biden, he said, “failed to capitalize on the window that he had opened after Oct. 7,” when the Democratic president expressed unalloyed support for Israel. “He kind of sat passive, and he just didn’t know how to do it. And Trump didn’t take any of the recommendations from the ‘pressure Israel’ crowd. He didn’t cut off military aid. In fact, he accelerated it. And that built up huge equity inside the Israeli body politic.”

Jewish political conservatives have been beyond effusive in their praise. The Republican Jewish Coalition has not only called for Trump to win the Nobel Peace Prize, it said the prize should be renamed for Trump.

Jo-Ann Mort, a public relations consultant who has worked with liberal Jewish and non-Jewish groups, said Trump deserved thanks, but the deal was not the game changer that Trump and his acolytes were claiming. Its terms have been on the table since the Biden administration, she said, and keeping the peace in the Middle East has been part of the presidential brief since at least Israel’s inception.

“It was an agreement that was on the table a year ago that Bibi didn’t take,” she said. “This is what the president of the United States is supposed to do in a place where the U.S. has so many interests and is so deeply involved –  it would have been contrary to his role as president if he hadn’t tried to solve it.”

Soifer, the Jewish Democrats’ CEO, said that even as the deal deserves praise, its elements needed further scrutiny, particularly the ensuing enhancements in security cooperation between the United States and Qatar, a country that has backed Hamas. She noted for instance a deal he brokered with Yemen’s Houthi militia earlier this year that stopped attacks on U.S.-flagged ships – but allowed them to continue on Israeli flagged ships. On Friday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that Qatar would establish a military installation within the United States, which has also offered Qatar security assurances designed to prevent Israel from striking Hamas leaders living there.

“Israel’s security has not been a part of every calculation in terms of foreign policy of this administration and the Houthis are one example,” Soifer said. “This deal with the Qataris may be another, and we do need to consider Israel’s security. His tunnel vision may serve his short-term interests” of securing a Nobel Peace Prize, “but it doesn’t necessarily serve our long term national security interests as well as that of Israel.”

Betsy Sheer, a leading Florida-based fundraiser for Jewish causes and for Democrats, said praise for Trump’s deal should be unstinting — as should be resistance to his domestic policies.

“Trump has figured out a way, unlike his predecessor, who I thought was extremely supportive of Israel – he’s figured out a way through knocking heads and embarrassing people and promising God knows what that got us to this moment, and I don’t think we can overlook that,” she said.

“His domestic policies are abhorrent, and you know, I’m not going to let up on that at all,” Sheer said. “You still have to look at the shutting down of civil liberties and voting rights and the authoritarian stance and the punitive way of suing everybody that’s ever been an enemy.”

In the days before his murder, Charlie Kirk was frustrated — and he wasn’t hiding it from his friends. The conservative influencer complained in a WhatsApp group that his “Jewish donors” were “playing into all the stereotypes” and said they were pushing him to “leave the pro-Israel cause.”

Those messages surfaced and were confirmed as authentic this week, giving new insight into what was on Kirk’s mind before his death.

“I cannot and will not be bullied like this,” Kirk wrote in the group WhatsApp conversation, which included Jewish associates.

The messages, along with the recently revealed full text of a letter Kirk had sent to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu several months before his death, provide additional evidence that Kirk’s frustrations with the behavior of Israel and its supporters were boiling over.

Kirk’s views on Israel and Jews have become one of the most scrutinized aspects of the millennial pundit’s legacy in the wake of his assassination on a Utah college campus. They also reveal the deepening trenches on the right over Israel, as young conservatives are showing signs of turning against its conduct of the Gaza war and some have percolated conspiracy theories alleging that Israel played a role in Kirk’s murder.

Pro-Israel backers of Kirk, including Netanyahu, rushed after his death to label the pundit as an unwavering friend and supporter of Israel — even as Kirk, during his life, was on record as supporting aspects of the Great Replacement theory and making other comments disparaging Jews. Netanyahu also posted his own video just prior to Kirk’s funeral refuting the idea that Israel was involved in the influencer’s murder.

Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson, a friend and associate of Kirk’s who has leaned more heavily into anti-Israel and conspiratorial rhetoric in recent years, alluded to Kirk’s assassins “eating hummus” during a eulogy at the pundit’s funeral that was also attended by President Donald Trump.

Carlson and fellow conspiratorial right-wing personality Candace Owens, also a longtime friend of Kirk’s, are at the center of the leaked texts as well. In them, Kirk discussed what he implied was Jewish blowback to his associations with both of them, including plans to invite Carlson to an event staged by his group Turning Point USA.

“Just lost another huge Jewish donor. $2 million a year because we won’t cancel Tucker,” Kirk wrote, adding, “I’m thinking of inviting Candace.” Another member of the thread, whose identity has not been revealed, responded, “Ugghhh”; later someone adds “Please don’t invite Candace.”

The text messages don’t name any donors, but the New York Times reported earlier this month that Robert Shillman, a tech mogul and supporter of pro-Israel causes, grew angry at Kirk and canceled a $2 million donation to TPUSA over Carlson’s participation at a TPUSA event.

The texts were first revealed this week by Owens, on her YouTube show. Their authenticity was later confirmed by Andrew Kolvet, a spokesperson for TPUSA, in his appearance on Kirk’s own eponymous show Wednesday.

At least one pro-Israel Jewish associate of Kirk’s, Newsweek opinion editor Josh Hammer, has confirmed he was on the text thread.

Owens, who claimed the texts were sent “48 hours” before Kirk’s murder and that their recipients included “a rabbi,” sought to paint the texts as evidence that Kirk had recently made powerful enemies in the pro-Israel sphere. On X, she has insinuated that Hammer may have had foreknowledge of Kirk’s murder.

Kolvet was more sanguine about what they revealed.

“I actually am really excited that the truth is out there,” Kolvet said on the show, adding that Kirk’s texts were “consistent with public frustrations he voiced many times” about the pro-Israel movement.

“What is the truth about the way Charlie felt about Israel? Well, it’s complicated and it’s nuanced, and it was a wrestle that was going on for months,” Kolvet said. Later, he added, “Charlie was wonderfully defiant. He was wonderfully independent, and he believed in the freedom of speech, and he felt like he deserved, as a friend of Israel over many years, the right to speak out and have criticisms.”

Kolvet noted that Kirk tended to strike “a more moderate tone in public” on the subject of Israel than the way he came across in the texts, while also sharing past interviews in which Kirk had expressed frustration that some pro-Israel circles were portraying him as an antisemite. Prior to his death, Kirk had sent a letter to Netanyahu warning him that Israel was “losing support even in conservative circles.”

Hammer, addressing the texts, wrote on the social network X on Thursday that Kirk “was blowing off steam in a private group chat setting.” He spoke with Kirk about Israel hours later, he said, adding, “Charlie sought out our advice for how to better communicate the Israel issue on campus so as to be most effective with a younger Gen Z audience.”

“Donors have every right to withhold donations, and organization CEOs/chairmen have every right to then be upset when donors withhold those donations,” Hammer wrote by way of explaining the emotions behind the texts. He added, “the notion that Charlie Kirk was ‘turning’ on his career-long friendships with the Jewish people and the Jewish state of Israel—as opposed to (sarcastically!) blowing off steam in a private group chat setting—is an egregious lie and is belied by the facts.”

On Kirk’s show, Kolvet discussed Israel with Blake Neff — a former writer on Carlson’s Fox News show who resigned from the network in 2020 after it was revealed he had written numerous anonymous racist posts.

Neff on Wednesday continued the Israel discussion by holding up a copy of “Righteous Victims,” a 1999 book about the Arab-Israeli conflict by prominent Israeli historian Benny Morris whose scholarship on the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict casts significant blame on Israel.  Neff said that he had finished reading it just before Kirk’s shooting in Utah.

“I read this book because Charlie said, ‘Blake, get really well versed on this so you can help me whenever it comes up,’” Neff recalled.

No evidence has been shared linking the only suspect to be charged with Kirk’s murder to Israel. Yet Kolvet, adding fuel to the conspiratorial fire, stated that he had turned over the texts about “Jewish donors” to the FBI in the wake of the shooting.

“We wanted to leave nothing unturned,” he said, later suggesting that speculation on Kirk’s relationship with his Jewish donors could wind up “tainting a jury pool.”

On the second floor of a nondescript commercial building in Gravesend, Brooklyn, is a small artists’ studio. There, four long wooden tables are pushed together to create one massive table covered with oil paints, canvases, watercolors and other tools of the trade. The white walls are adorned with dozens of drawings and paintings; along one wall, a dozen cubbies are filled with even more art supplies.

It could be one of countless shared studio spaces for artists that are hidden in corners throughout the five boroughs. But this particular space is designed expressly for Jewish women artists: It’s closed on Shabbat and Jewish holidays, and among the art and design books on the shelves are siddurs, or prayer books.

Welcome to Muse Brooklyn, a coworking space built by and for Jewish women artists. The brainchild of Lenore Mizrachi-Cohen, a conceptual artist and observant Jew, the space doubles as an arts event space for its corner of Brooklyn, which is home to a significant Syrian Jewish community. Some 38,200 and 55,000 Syrian Jews live in the surrounding neighborhoods, according to a recent study commissioned by JIMENA, a nonprofit that advocates Middle Eastern and North African Jews — and, so far, all seven members of the shared studio are Mizrahi Jews.

“I initially started it for my own needs,” said Cohen, a 35-year-old married mother of four who has been working as an artist and calligrapher for 15 years.

Cohen was inspired to create Muse after a stint, in 2019, at a women-only art studio in Jerusalem, called Studio of Her Own. That shared space — which was designed for religious women often facing communal pressures against their artistic pursuits — opened her eyes to what a neighborhood studio for women like her could look like.

“It was 12 minutes away from my house, and it was a very supportive environment,” Cohen recalled. When she returned to New York she sought something similar in Brooklyn, but didn’t find it. “That’s when I realized that if it doesn’t exist in my own neighborhood, then it’s my job to make it.”

At Muse Brooklyn, the seven current members are all part of the local Syrian Jewish community, and all are at least somewhat traditionally observant. (There’s room for twice as many members, Cohen added, and being Jewish, Mizrahi or religious is not required.) In the shared space, the women — who each pay $206 a month — can draw, paint, or work in any medium they like, as well as brainstorm ideas with each other in a supportive environment of a shared identity. And because the space is women-only, members never need to worry about issues of yichud, the Jewish laws prohibiting men and women who are not married to each other from being secluded together.

The idea for Muse predated the war in Gaza, but Cohen said the tense climate for some Jewish artists within the city’s existing cultural institutions that resulted fueled her drive.

Previously a member at a shared studio in Red Hook, Brooklyn, Cohen said that she had felt singled out there as a Jew, recalling that she was once asked if she was comfortable with another artist donating money to a pro-Palestinian children’s charity.

“A, that’s weird that you think I would have a problem with that. B, it’s already somewhat of an issue that they’re creating: ‘Oh, you’re Jewish, but I’m a ‘free Palestine’ person,’” Cohen said.

Cohen began looking for a space to execute her vision in September 2023. Muse Brooklyn officially launched exactly a year later, when she found a space to rent within a larger complex currently used as a music coworking space by another member of the Syrian community.

Aimee Swed, a 32-year-old content and marketing professional and mother of two young boys, joined Muse when it opened last fall. Swed said that, as a Shabbat-observant Jew, she felt “very discouraged from entering the art world.” Many galleries held openings on Friday nights, she explained, and workshops and classes were often on Saturdays.

An artist who works in watercolor, acrylics and multimedia, she said her work has been “transformed” by the shared Jewish space.

“The camaraderie kind of reinitiated my own artistic practice,” said Swed, whose work focuses on the food found on her Syrian Jewish Shabbat table, like her watercolors of kibbeh meatballs with rice and meat. “It’s really something that became very important to me, because it felt so good to create with others, and finally find a space that was very friendly towards what you were creating.”

Now that she works in a studio with other Mizrahi Jewish artists, Swed, whose family is Syrian via Egypt, finds inspiration all around her, including Cohen’s Arabic calligraphy. “One of the first things that I made was [a painting of] some phrases, like, ‘yom asal, yom basal,’ — ‘one day onion, one day honey’ [which] is what my grandma would say,” she said.

Not everyone who comes to Muse is necessarily working on Jewish art. For Shelley Shamah, a 22-year-old illustrator, graphic designer and photographer, Muse is simply a safe space for artists who happen to be Jewish.

Shamah, who also joined last fall, was drawn to Muse because she needed “to be in a space that fuels creativity,” she said.

Part of that, she explained, is simply being around likeminded people. “Jews are a microcosm of the world, but Syrians are a microcosm of Jews,” she said.

On a recent Tuesday, Shamah, a recent graduate of the Pratt Institute, was working on a canvas for her dining room, which she will soon be sharing with her fiancé, a musician.

Shamah and another young Muse member, Allie Saada, a recent graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology, consider themselves part of the “younger bunch” of artists in the group.

Not yet married or mothers, they feel they can take full advantage of the space, coming in at all hours of the day and night, where they often run into each other.

For Swed, whose sons are 4 and 5, the space provides almost the opposite advantage.

“It was really hard, like any working mom, trying to step back into another world once she’s had children,” Swed said. “So as a mom coming into an all-women space, that felt really good, too.”

The studio also functions as a space for the neighborhood to engage in the arts. Several times a month, Muse holds events such as art classes, paint-and-sip nights and museum tours, taught and led by its members, and always with the Jewish holiday schedule in mind. Shelley Shamah even had her 22nd birthday party, a drink-and-draw night, in the space with a dozen of her friends.

Ultimately, Cohen hopes that Muse will grow into a robust network of Jewish women artists. “The more people you have in the space who generate opportunities like this, the better it is for everyone concerned,” Cohen, who’s shown work at the Jewish Museum in Vienna, the Museo Ebraico in Lecce, Ital,y and the Jewish Museum in Amsterdam, said. “All your best opportunities in your career as an artist, at least for me, come from other artists.”

She added: “Create the conditions to be successful. Show up and watch what happens.”

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Jewish president, Sally Kornbluth, became the first university leader to reject the Trump administration’s offer to adopt a policy deal in exchange for funding benefits.

The administration extended its proposal, titled the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” to nine universities this month that it said were “good actors.” The deal would require the schools to cap international student enrollment, limit employees’ political speech, and make other changes in line with the administration’s policies — including “transforming or abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”

In exchange, the schools would gain “priority” federal funding – a potentially potent carrot at a time when the Trump administration is more often slashing schools’ funding in an effort to retaliate against them and force changes.

One school, the public University of Texas system, said it was honored to be considered without yet accepting. Kornbluth’s rejection makes MIT the first of the schools to reject the deal.

“In our view, America’s leadership in science and innovation depends on independent thinking and open competition for excellence,” she wrote in a letter to U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon Friday. “Therefore, with respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education.”

The rejection could make Kornbluth a target of conservative ire nearly two years after she dodged criticism in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. After she and two other university leaders appeared before Congress in December 2023 to answer questions about their schools’ handling of campus antisemitism, the other two were widely maligned for their responses and soon resigned.

But Kornbluth, who had built strong ties with Jewish leaders at MIT and her previous university, Duke, retained the support of her community, despite concerns about responses to pro-Palestinian student protesters.

Now, Kornbluth could reignite right-wing anger — while shoring up support among those on her campus who might see her as resisting an inappropriate intrusion into the university’s governance.

In the letter, Kornbluth added that the “compact” included principles that would “restrict freedom of expression and our independence as an institution.”

While MIT has gone largely unscathed by the Trump administration’s campaign against antisemitism on college campuses, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law filed a lawsuit against the school alleging that it had “allowed an anti-Semitic climate to persist.”

The other seven colleges offered the deal were the University of Arizona, Brown University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia. Other than the University of Texas, the other schools have not yet commented. It was not clear how the White House selected them.