On stage last Sunday at the Jewish Theological Seminary, the comedian Alex Edelman told a Jewish joke that he said he once read in an academic journal. 

It essentially goes like this: A man goes to heaven and meets God. Eager to please, the man asks God if He’d like to hear a joke. “I love jokes,” says God. So the man tells God a Holocaust joke. God doesn’t laugh and says, “I don’t find that funny.” “Well,” says the man. “I guess you had to be there.”

That startling punchline echoed as I read “The Last Jewish Joke,” a new book on the rise and decline of Jewish humor by the eminent French sociologist Michel Wieviorka. The son of Holocaust survivors from Poland who also enjoyed a good Jewish joke, Wieviorka, 79, asserts that after a period of communal security and acceptance that followed the horrors of World War II, the conditions that led to the flourishing of Jewish humor have been depleted, both in the United States and France. 

“This book is not a catalog of Jewish jokes,” Wieviorka, professor of sociology at EHESS, Paris, told me in an interview. “It’s really an analysis of a golden age which is past.”

I understand what he means, even if I don’t necessarily agree with his conclusions. From the 1960s to roughly the year 2000, he suggests, American and French Jews enjoyed a period of openness: antisemitism was in decline, both countries moved toward a form of multiculturalism, there was a general consensus that the Holocaust was bad and that Israel was a force for good. 

In such an environment, he writes, “Jewish humor had a very clear and visible place, often found in political debates and also in literary, artistic, and intellectual life.”

The past 25 years, however, saw a rise in antisemitism on both the right and the left. Islamists, Holocaust deniers and conspiracy theorists targeted Jews each in their own ways. Openness fasttracked assimilation, and a waning of engaged secular Jewishness. Israel was on its way to becoming an international pariah state, and Jews lost their status as a historically persecuted minority and were promoted to the status of privileged whites. 

“The space for benevolent feelings toward Jews became narrower and narrower,” he said. “And when this space is narrower and narrower, it’s more difficult to make humor, not only for your group, but also for people other than those that belong to your group.”

The golden age that he describes — which in the United States roughly extends from the heyday of the Borscht Belt to the finale of “Seinfeld” — encouraged what Wieviorka considers three essential traits of Jewish humor. First, it laughs at ourselves — not at others. Second, it doesn’t punch down: Anti-Belgian jokes may work in Paris cafés, but Jewish humor doesn’t thrive on cruelty. Third, it needs community. You can’t tell a Jewish joke in a vacuum; you need a knowing audience, a minyan of laughter.

The ideal Jewish joke also says something funny about the Jews without giving succor to antisemites. There is an assumption, says Wieviorka, that everyone is in on the joke, Jews and non-Jews alike. 

He offers an example, a joke told by a family friend who worked in the shmatte, or clothing, business: A client places a large order at a wholesale clothing store in the shmatte district. When he asks for a receipt, the perplexed clerk consults with his boss. “A receipt?” says the boss, indignantly. “What kind of scam is he trying to pull?”

Wieviorka loves the joke, first of all, because his own forebears worked in the rag trade. While the joke leans into an antisemitic trope — the wily businessman — it does it in a way that a non-Jewish audience would identify with: nobody wanted to pay taxes in postwar France. And he likes the way it is a joke Jews tell on themselves — recognizing the absurdity of the boss’s paranoia, and how his accusation is a confession.

It’s a joke that could be told without reservations from the 1970s to the 1990s, when the Diaspora, he writes, “felt things were going rather well.” 

In describing how things ended up going rather poorly, Wieviorka’s analysis seems spot on. “When the genocide and indeed the shock of its discovery lose their primacy as references, when interest in the intellectual heritage and cultural vitality of Yiddishkeit begins to wane, when Israel ceases to be viewed in a positive light, and when the capacity for bringing to life a Jewishness that also interests non-Jews is absent, these jokes can only appear as vestiges from the past,” he writes. 

Except when they don’t, and that’s where I part ways with Wieviorka. Despite his dire warnings, Jewish humor appears alive and well, at least in the United States. The new Netflix animated series, “Long Story Short,” is a satire of a contemporary Jewish family, slathered with Yiddishisms and insider Jewish jokes and references. Another Netflix series, 2024’s “Nobody Wants This,” is about a single rabbi who falls in love with a non-Jewish podcaster. It abounds with jokes about Shabbat, rabbis and, of course, intermarriage, and will return for a second season on Oct. 23.

Edelman, meanwhile, has had uncommon success with his one-man show, “Just for Us,” a stand-up comedy special about his boyhood at a Jewish day school and his more recent attempts to understand the antisemitism of white supremacists. The show moved to Broadway, is available on Netflix and launched Edelman into a higher plane: He’s in the cast of “The Paper” on Peacock. The show is a spinoff of “The Office,” NBC’s wildly popular and influential sitcom. 

Even Edelman’s appearance at JTS was confirmation that Jews still love their comics. He shared a stage with the memoirist and novelist Shalom Auslander at “Spoiler,” a three-day festival celebrating the new MFA in Creative Writing program at Conservative Judaism’s flagship university, where both are teaching. The director of the program is the Israeli writer Etgar Keret, whose short-short stories seem to start as jokes — a talking goldfish grants wishes, a man dates a woman who transforms at night into a beer-drinking bro — and end with an emotional punchline.

All of the comic projects above are trying to say something new. Yes, “Long Story Short” propagates the Jewish mother stereotype and “Nobody Wants This” includes cringey “shiksa” jokes and a few unpleasant stereotypes of its own. But both shows mine laughs from specific Jewish folkways in ways even the great Jewish comedians of the ”golden era” would not have dared. The same can be said for the 2020 comedy “Shiva Baby,” Adam Sandler’s 2024 movie “You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah,” the 2025 farce “Bad Shabbos” and choice episodes of Larry David’s sitcom “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

Even the Holocaust joke Edelman told feels fresh. In the guise of a staple of Jewish humor — guy goes to heaven, gets to meet God —  it poses the central challenge of post-Shoah theology: “Where was God in the Holocaust?” Try that in the Catskills.

So much of what we call Jewish humor — of the Ashkenazi, American kind, anyway — is based on nostalgia. That’s not a bad thing. Judaism itself is a culture of retelling old stories, in hopes of connecting generations with a common vocabulary. Jewish humor can itself be a form of identity — which is better, as Wieviorka concedes in the conclusion of his book, than a “pure and simple forgetting.” 

So maybe the last Jewish joke isn’t the last after all. Maybe it’s just the latest retelling of an old story — ours — one that keeps finding ways to make us laugh when the world conspires to make us cry.

Israelis are paying widespread tribute to Charlie Kirk, renaming streets and painting murals in honor of the American conservative activist assassinated this week in Utah.

In at least one case, according to pictures circulating on social media, an Israeli missile was inscribed with the message “In memory of Charlie Kirk,” reflecting a recurring and at times divisive practice in the Israeli army.

“Direct from Gaza. He’d be so proud,” the right-wing influencer Hillel Fuld tweeted as he shared the picture.

Kirk, the CEO and co-founder of the youth organization Turning Point USA, visited Israel multiple times and defended it against right-wing critics, including during the current Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Israeli leaders including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were among the first voices to respond to his shooting on Wednesday, calling for prayers on his behalf.

Following his death, a traffic circle in the city of Netanya will be renamed in Kirk’s honor, the city’s mayor announced on Thursday.

“On behalf of the Municipality of Netanya and all its residents – I have decided to commemorate Charlie’s memory in a square that will bear his name,” Mayor Miriam Feirberg-Ikar said on Instagram, adding that those who visit will “remember Israel’s great friend.”

“Charlie was a courageous and powerful voice for Israel,” she continued. “He dedicated his life to the struggle for truth, to exposing lies, and to standing up against the recurring waves of antisemitism.”

A mural of Kirk with angel wings went up in the city of Ashdod less than 24 hours after his death, painted by the graffiti artist Dudi Shoval.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by דודי שובל – אומן גרפיטי & ציורי קיר (@dudi_shoval)

“If the world is divided into good and evil, then we lost a very important person today on the side of the good. I still can’t believe they managed to shut your mouth,” Shoval posted on Instagram. “May we continue Charlie’s path and never allow the insane anarchists to use violence to silence us and throw us off the map. We literally need you to keep watching over us from above. May his memory be a blessing 🕊️.”

The Israeli influencer Hananya Naftali drew attention to the mural on Facebook.

“This could be the first mural in his honor in the world, and it’s here in Israel,” the Israeli right-wing influencer Hananya Naftali said in a video in which he was standing in front of the mural. “This is how much he meant to us because he was a champion of the Judeo-Christian alliance, he was a staunch friend of Israel, and we will never forget those that stand for the truth.”

Encomia for Kirk continued to flow from Israeli leaders on the right as well. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Kirk as a “lion-hearted friend of Israel,” adding that he “fought the lies and stood tall for Judeo-Christian civilization.”

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, the vanguard of Israel’s far-right, wrote in an English-language post on X that Kirk had, in his view, correctly identified the problems that needed solving.

“The collusion between the global Left and radical Islam is the greatest danger to humanity today. Charlie Kirk saw the danger and warned about it,” Ben-Gvir wrote. “But the bullets of the despicable murderer struck him. Thank you, Charlie, for your support of Israel and for your struggle for a better world.”

In the United States, politically conservative Jews also paid tribute to Kirk. The hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman, who has emerged as a potent voice on issues related to antisemitism and Israel, on X pledged $1 million to the FBI to reward people supplying information leading to the capture of Kirk’s killer. He also pledged another $1 million to create an endowment to support Kirk’s widow and two children.

Authorities announced on Friday that they had arrested a 22-year-old Utahn, Tyler Robinson, whom they believed had killed Kirk.

Meanwhile the Jewish apparel company JDrip started selling a Kirk memorial kippah for $49.99 online, with all proceeds going to “Jewish or pro-Israel causes, or those promoting free speech and debate in the United States,” according to its website.

“JDRIP is not a partisan company,” the store wrote in the description for the kippah. “We are releasing this item in honor of free political speech and debate in the United States, in alignment with the statements of both Barack Obama and Donald Trump.”

Zohran Mamdani said he would seek the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if Mamdani is elected and Netanyahu comes to New York City.

“This is something that I intend to fulfill,” Mamdani, the Democratic candidate and frontrunner, told The New York Times in an interview released Friday.

Mamdani, a staunch and longtime critic of Israel and its government, had indicated during the primary that he would aim to carry out an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court last year against Netanyahu over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, where Israel has been fighting Hamas since October 2023.

Mamdani has moderated on some of his most progressive positions as he has appeared increasingly likely to win the keys to City Hall in November, but he told the newspaper that his stance on arresting Netanyahu was unchanged.

For the first time, he explicitly said he would order the NYPD to make the arrest, the Times reported. He also said he would ask the NYPD to carry out other ICC warrants as well, such as the 2023 warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“It is my desire to ensure that this be a city that stands up for international law,” said Mamdani, who as mayor would set NYPD policy priorities but not have the legal power to order arrests.

Netanyahu has brushed off the threat as well as the charges, and the United States is not party to the treaty that created the ICC, meaning that there is no obligation to carry out its warrants on U.S. soil. Any attempt by Mamdani to have Netanyahu arrested, in addition to falling outside the mayor’s legal purview, would result in a clash with the Trump administration, which has hosted the Israeli prime minister multiple times at the White House since the ICC warrant against him was issued.

“This statement is more a political stunt than a serious law-enforcement policy,” Matthew Waxman, a scholar of international law at Columbia University, told the newspaper.

But if it is a stunt, it is one that may appeal to many New York City voters, particularly within Mamdani’s base on the left at a time when the candidate is softening or even recanting past progressive stances. A New York Times/Siena poll released earlier in the week found that voters favored Mamdani’s approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over other candidates’ by a wide margin.

According to the poll, 43% of likely voters said Mamdani was the candidate who “best addressed” the conflict, while only 16% said the same of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and 11% favored Mayor Eric Adams, each of whom has fashioned himself a defender of Israel. Cuomo volunteered to join Netanyahu’s legal defense team in the wake of the ICC warrant.

Mamdani’s advocacy for Palestinians and criticism of Israel have burned at the center of the race, becoming a flashpoint for Cuomo and Adams, longtime Democrats running as independents. Both gambled on Mamdani’s Israel stance being a political weakness, as it traditionally has been among New York Democrats. They called Mamdani an antisemite and “terrorist sympathizer” and made fighting antisemitism a central issue in their campaigns.

Yet that link did not broadly resonate with New Yorkers, according to the Times/Siena poll. The majority of polled voters, 57%, did not believe that criticism of Israel in the United States today is mostly antisemitic. Another 33% said it was mostly antisemitic and 11% said they didn’t know. Likely voters in New York also sympathized more with Palestinians (46%) than with Israel (29%) — a change in keeping with shifting public opinion but a stark dynamic for a city that is home to largest Jewish population outside Israel.

Jews made up 15% of respondents to the poll, which included 1,284 likely voters between Sept. 2-6 and had an error margin of 3.6%.

Like other polls in recent months, the Times/Siena poll found that Mamdani drew a plurality of Jewish voters (34%) but not a majority, according to Siena Research Institute director Don Levy. The majority of Jews splintered among Cuomo (26%), Adams (25%) and Republican Curtis Sliwa (13%).

Previous polls have shown that Jews are deeply divided on Mamdani. In a July Zenith Research poll, 67% of Jewish voters between 18 and 44 said they planned to vote for Mamdani. A New York Solidarity Network poll, meanwhile, found that 58% of Jews overall said they believed they would be less safe under his leadership, including a large contingent of older voters.

Polling in July found that Mamdani’s advocacy for Palestinians is not a sideshow for many of his supporters. The Middle East Understanding Policy Project’s survey said that while his promises to lower costs and tax the wealthy were most inspiring to his primary voters, his pro-Palestinian stance also drove 62% of them to the polls.

The public broadcasters of both Ireland and the Netherlands announced this week that they will not participate in next year’s Eurovision Song Contest if Israel is allowed to participate.

They join several other countries in pressing the competition’s organizer, the European Broadcasting Union, into excluding Israel as an act of protest against Israel’s participation because of the war in Gaza.

The EBU has until now resisted entreaties to bar Israel but now faces a crisis as Europe — both through its unified institutions and as individual countries — has sought to ramp up pressure on Israel to end the war, which began when Hamas attacked on Oct. 7, 2023.

“RTÉ feels that Ireland’s participation would be unconscionable given the ongoing and appalling loss of lives in Gaza,” the Irish public broadcaster said in a statement on Thursday, adding that it was “deeply concerned by the targeted killing of journalists in Gaza.” (The Committee to Protect Journalists says 197 journalists have been killed during the war; Israel has said some of them were Hamas operatives.)

On Friday, the Dutch broadcaster AVROTROS announced that the Netherlands would not participate in the competition if the European Broadcasting Union admitted Israel into the competition, where it has participated since 1973, winning four times.

“AVROTROS can no longer justify Israel’s participation in the current situation, given the ongoing and severe human suffering in Gaza,” the broadcaster wrote in a statement.

The broadcasters in Slovenia, Spain and Iceland have also all signaled that they could pull out of Eurovision if the EBU does not exclude Israel.

“I don’t think we can normalize Israel’s participation in international events as if nothing is happening,” Ernest Urtasun, the Spanish culture minister, told La Hora de La 1. “In Eurovision’s case, it is not an individual artist who participates but someone who participates on behalf of that country’s citizens.”

The contest is meant to be intensely apolitical, but for many Israelis, Eurovision is seen as something of a barometer of their country’s status on the international stage. Protests against the Israeli act are closely watched, and in the last two years, during the war, the artists selected to represent Israel have incorporated symbols of resilience into their wardrobes and lyrics.

In announcing its boycott, AVROTROS also cited the “proven evidence of interference” by the Israeli government in the 2025 competition, referencing complaints by several European broadcasters who raised questions about Israel’s victory in the contest’s audience poll in May.

Israel’s Yuval Raphael came in second after being bolstered by the popular vote and drawing points from the juries in 14 countries.

The EBU had rejected pressure to exclude Israel but later opened a process to solicit feedback from the contest’s 37 participating countries over how it should navigate geopolitical tensions. Martin Green, the contest’s director, said in a statement on Friday that the process was ongoing.

“Broadcasters have until mid-December to confirm if they wish to take part in next year’s event in Vienna,” he said. “It is up to each member to decide if they want to take part in the contest and we would respect any decision broadcasters make.”

The director general of Icelandic broadcaster RÚV signaled that while so far the EBU had resisted entreaties to exclude Israel, he was hoping for change.

“I think it is likely that if there is no change in EBU’s position and it does not respond to these voices of concern coming from us, from Spain and Slovenia and others, then that will call for reactions from these broadcasters,” he said. “But let’s just wait and see.”

A major European cosmetics firm has vowed to reexamine its Nazi-era history amid revelations that it benefited from gruesome human experiments in a Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust.

Weleda, founded in 1921 in Germany by a Swiss parent company, claimed that its skin cream could protect German soldiers from frostbite. To prove the claim, Nazi doctors and their assistants — some of them with connections to Weleda — used the cream in brutal experiments on some 300 prisoners at the Dachau concentration camp, in which they were submerged in water with ice blocks for hours on end.

About 80 to 90 prisoners died as a result, in one of countless examples of inhumane medical experimentation to which the Nazis subjected their victims.

The German historian Anne Sudrow exposed the Weleda experiments in a new book published Monday under the auspices of the Dachau memorial. They were first reported publicly in Der Spiegel magazine last week.

In response to the revelations, the company, now headquartered in Arlesheim, Switzerland, said it will reexamine its Nazi-era history. An in-house study, published last year, failed to uncover Weleda’s role in human experiments.

“All of this new research gives us reason to revisit our history in depth with a large, independent study,” Weleda CEO Tina Müller said in a statement. The new study is expected to take two years to complete.

Sudrow found that the company had close ties to the SS and benefited from Dachau’s slave labor, obtaining medicinal herbs grown by prisoners there at a reduced cost. The company supplied the camp with a cream that was supposed to have an antifreeze effect. SS doctor Sigmund Rascher conducted human experiments to test the hypothesis — reportedly promoted by Weleda — that the product could protect soldiers from frostbite and make amputations unnecessary. Two former Weleda employees directed the experiments and reported back to company management, Sudrow reported.

As reports of the revelations emerged, the company denounced Nazism in a corporate statement. “At Weleda, we condemn the atrocities of National Socialism in the strongest possible terms,” it said. “Fascism, anti-Semitism, racism, or right-wing extremist ideology have no place in our company. Weleda is a place of humanity. ‘Never again’ expresses our stance.”

Weleda is a natural cosmetics company that was inspired by Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophical movement, a quasi-religious movement officially banned by the Nazis that promoted some overlapping ideas. It was founded in 1921 in Schwäbisch Gmünd, in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, where it produced homeopathic medicines, dietary supplements and skin care products.

Today, it is an increasingly profitable cosmetics company that operates in 50 countries and cleared more than 450 million euros of business last year. While it is most popular in Europe, its diaper cream in particular has cult status in the United States.

A page on its website chronicling the company’s activities from 1933 to 1945, when the Nazi regime ruled Germany, had been removed this week. But according to a version of the page from August, available through the Internet Archive, the page said Weleda had faced persecution by the Nazis and that, while former Weleda employees had been Nazis, the company was not involved in any Nazi uses of its products. According to a historian who had researched the company, the page said, “Weleda did not participate in the inhumane policies of the Nazi dictatorship.”

The page also said Weleda contributed to the EVZ Foundation, a fund to support ongoing education and remembrance initiatives related to Germany’s Nazi past, when the government launched it in 2000. The company’s management said at the time, according to the page, “Weleda AG has never employed forced labourers in its history. However, it acknowledges the Germans’ shared responsibility for the injustice suffered by forced labourers under Nazi rule in World War II.”

Several major German companies, from banks to auto manufacturers, have commissioned studies of their wartime operations, publishing the results and contributing to funds that support former slave laborers and educational projects. In 2019, for example, the Reimann family, heirs of a German firm that had profited from Nazi-era slave labor, established the Alfred Landecker Foundation to fight antisemitism, support Holocaust studies and uphold democratic values.

BUENOS AIRES — The mayor of Buenos Aires is moving to punish an elementary school teacher who posted a video of himself unfurling a Palestinian flag and asking his students to applaud “for the teachers in Gaza and the children of Palestine.”

The city is opening disciplinary proceedings against Federico Puy, a left-wing activist and teachers union leader, over the incident, which took place Thursday on the Argentine holiday known as Teacher’s Day.

“I wanted to pay a small tribute to the teachers of Gaza, to the children in Palestine who are being killed by the massacre carried out by the State of Israel, and also to those traveling on the flotilla trying to reach the West Bank,” Puy told assembled students, according to the widely circulated video. ”So I brought a Palestinian flag and I ask for a big round of applause.”

His audience applauded as instructed.

Una bandera Palestina en mí escuela. Un acto diferente. En el día del maestrx, mí homenaje a las y los maestros de Gaza, a las infancias asesinadas por el ejército de Israel y a la resistencia palestina. pic.twitter.com/4h3K6iuTlb

— Federico Puy (@fedepuy) September 10, 2025

The Argentine Jewish political umbrella organization DAIA decried the incident and said it represented a bastardization of Teacher’s Day, which honors an educator who was influential in Argentina’s development and became its president in the 19th century.

“This behavior is extremely serious, not only because it distorts the main purpose of the event, but also because of the impact that an educator’s words, silences, and gestures can have on students and families,” DAIA said in a statement. “Legitimizing Jew-hatred by abusing such a sensitive role as that of a teacher undermines the basic principles of democracy and equality.”

Explicitly political advocacy in the classroom is banned under Argentine law. But the bid to punish Puy also comes as Argentina is one of the few countries whose government remains staunchly supportive of the Israeli government two years into the war in Gaza.

Mayor Jorge Macri, elected in 2023, is a member of Propuesta Republicana, a center-right political party that has allied with President Javier Milei, a personal and political supporter of Israel. A cousin of the party’s leader Mauricio Macri, a past mayor of Buenos Aires who was president of Argentina from 2015 to 2019, Jorge Macri was endorsed by Milei.

“What happened in this school is very serious and the person responsible will be sanctioned with the full weight of the regulations,” Macri tweeted. “Using the classroom to impose an ideology is indoctrination we will not allow.”

Education Minister Mercedes Miguel noted that the country’s Teacher Statute establishes a duty to “educate with absolute independence from partisan or religious beliefs, promoting democratic principles and respect for human rights.” He called Puy’s conduct “inadmissible” and said an administrative inquiry would be opened under city rules requiring political neutrality in schools.

Puy is the press secretary of the Ademys teachers union, which issued a statement defending him and denouncing the ministry’s response as “persecution.” His supporters, including a lawmaker who raised his case in the legislature, argued that he did not make a partisan statement and that his message supporting the children of Gaza, who have largely not attended school for nearly two years, was in keeping with the theme of Teacher’s Day.

Teachers unions in the United States and beyond have long been a frontier of tension over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, dating before the current war in Gaza.

A Republican member of Congress who has been a vocal opponent of campus antisemitism told a progressive Jewish Democrat on Wednesday to “get your nose done.”

Rep. Sara Jacobs and multiple progressive watchdogs denounced Rep. Nancy Mace’s comments as antisemitic.

Mace directed the comment at Jacobs, a California congresswoman, on the social network X, in the midst of a spat over health care for transgender women.

“To @RepSaraJacobs, I talk about women’s safety and your response is commentary about my body on the House floor,” Mace wrote Wednesday. “If you knew anything about survivors you would know some women change their bodies because of the trauma of sexual violence. They live with the consequences for a lifetime.”

She then added, “PS – I have a good surgeon if you ever want to get your nose done.”

Jacobs responded, “I didn’t say anything about your body but thanks for confirming! And going with the Jewish nose joke…very creative (and also very antisemitic).”

The idea that Jewish noses are unattractive is a longstanding antisemitic stereotype that has in the past fueled widespread use of cosmetic surgery by Jewish women.

The Nexus Project, a left-leaning antisemitism watchdog group, said on the rival social network BlueSky that Mace’s comments were “antisemitic, schoolyard bullying about their Jewish colleagues’ noses generally, and especially in a post about respecting women’s bodies.”

The Jewish Democratic Council of America also denounced the comments. “Telling a Jewish woman to get a nose job is antisemitism,” it said in a statement on social media. “Full stop.”

The spat came amid a debate between the two lawmakers on the House floor over a proposed Mace amendment to a defense spending budget that would have restricted transgender service members from accessing certain health care procedures and using the restroom that corresponds to their gender identity.

Addressing Mace, Jacobs had defended “gender-affirming care” by noting that many of her colleagues had received procedures that could be classified as such.

“I think it’s very interesting that my colleague from South Carolina is so obsessed with the issue of trans people, using horrible slurs to talk about them when many people in this body have received gender-affirming care,” Jacobs said. “Filler is gender-affirming care. Boob jobs is gender-affirming care. Botox is gender-affirming care. Lots of my colleagues have received gender-affirming care.”

Mace shot back, “Absolutely ridiculous.” She followed up with her nose comment on social media shortly after.

Mace, who has frequently made comments disparaging transgender people after taking a more moderate stance earlier in her career, has also sought to style herself as a warrior for Israel and against antisemitism. She has met with the Anti-Defamation League to discuss college campuses, supported a full federal defunding of Harvard University over charges the school harbored antisemitism, and hosted a press conference with the Orthodox student group Olami to advocate for changes to the Department of Education’s handling of campus antisemitism.

Last month she announced a run for South Carolina governor, calling herself “Trump in high heels.”

Jacobs has family members in Israel and has found herself walking the tightrope of many Jewish progressives after Oct. 7. She also revealed this week that she had undergone a process to freeze her eggs so she could defer having children until she is older, an option she said she believes should be accessible to U.S. women.

Jacobs, who says she has a trans sibling and another who is gender-nonconforming, said Mace “is intentionally targeting a vulnerable group of people because she wants the attention. It is cruel. It is malintended. And it is not just about ‘she said something wrong once.’ This has been a very strategic targeted approach she has taken.” She did not further mention the nose comment.

BROOKLYN — Brad Lander called for “a coalition of anti-Zionists and liberal Zionists” in a speech at a left-wing Jewish event where he was being honored alongside New York City mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani.

Lander, the city’s comptroller, who cross-endorsed Mamdani in the primary, also said he believed he should have done more to criticize Israel over the war in Gaza. He was speaking at a gala for the progressive group Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, which has expanded its pro-Palestinian advocacy during the nearly two-year war.

“While I have tried to find the courage required, while I called for a ceasefire with JFREJ on Hanukkah 2023, have stood many times with Israelis for Peace, I want to be clear — I know I have not done enough to speak out against Israel’s war crimes, against ethnic cleansing, against forced starvation of Palestinians,” Lander said, to loud cheers from the crowd of more than 1,000.

Lander’s comments were notable because of the dynamics around Israel at play among Jewish progressives ahead of the mayoral election. Mamdani is a longtime critic of Israel, while Lander has characterized himself as a liberal Zionist who has resisted articulating some of the harshest charges against Israel. The gap has been a rare area of sunlight between the two politicians, who share a progressive vision for the city’s future.

Lander said he believed the two camps could work together for the common good — though he acknowledged that doing so can be difficult.

“I believe we must build a coalition of anti-Zionists and liberal Zionists committed to ending the horrors in Gaza,” he said, noting that his synagogue, Brooklyn’s Kolot Chayeinu, has long been a meeting point for Jews aligned with the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace and the liberal Zionist group J Street. 

More recently, it has been among the many progressive Jewish spaces to be wracked by internal tensions during the war that began when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

“I’ve often joked that Kolot is a place where JVP Jews and J Street Jews pray together with only minimal side-eye. Historically, JFREJ has been like that, too,” Lander said. “But since Oct. 7, that has been so much harder. As Ezra Klein observed recently, ‘It’s a tense time in the Jewish family group chats.’ But it has never been more important.”

Lander’s comments came as JFREJ was honoring him and Mamdani with a joint “Mazals” award for their “partnership and the hope and optimism they’ve inspired.” Though the group does not take an official stance on Zionism, anti-Israel (and anti-Trump) messages were displayed prominently in the Brooklyn venue, including “Jews say: No genocide, No deportations, No anti-trans hate,” and “Arms embargo now,” alongside broader messages like “New York is for everyone” and “Care not corruption.”

Unlike other speakers, including Mamdani and the Jewish comedian and “Broad City” co-creator Ilana Glazer, Lander did not describe Israel’s conduct in Gaza as a “genocide.” He has said he eschews the term, which Israel rejects as inaccurate, because “it closes ears rather than opens them.”

Mamdani, meanwhile, called his primary victory “a lesson that so many in this city are horrified by the genocide being perpetrated by the Israeli military in Gaza, by the violence being inflicted using weapons paid for by our tax dollars as Americans.” (Polls show that voters were mostly motivated by other issues, but that 30% of voters said Mamdani’s stances on Israel made them more likely to vote for him.)

He lauded the JFREJ membership, saying, “Being here tonight truly feels like being with family.” 

“I’m so proud of the movement that we have built together, not because of how many of us there are, but because of the values that bind us,” Mamdani said. He then listed some of those values, mentioning compassion and a belief in affordability before concluding on a note about the issue he has described as central to his politics.

“And we hold a common belief in the shared dignity of every person on this planet, without exception, and a refusal to draw a line in the sand as it so often is done when it comes to Palestinian lives,” Mamdani said.

If Lander has been feeling the heat among progressives over his attitudes about Israel, attendees at the gala said they were not aware of it.

“I don’t think so,” said Marcia Belsky, a JFREJ member who hosted a Zoom portion of the event, when asked the question. “I think he’s an interesting person, where he identifies as a liberal Zionist, and yet he’s very actively outspoken against the genocide in Gaza and in aligning with people who are not willing to compromise with those talking points that the mainstream media always forces them into.”

Rabbi Andy Kahn, the executive director of the American Council for Judaism, a recently revived Reform anti-Zionist group, said he hadn’t heard anyone argue that Lander had been inadequately vocal about Israel or Gaza.

“I actually haven’t really heard that criticism of him, and I haven’t felt it myself either,” Kahn said.

“Like he said, he was out calling for a ceasefire in 2023,” he said, adding that Lander has been “doing this work for a really long time in really good faith.” 

Lander elaborated on his comments in an interview following the ceremony, pointing to a recent op-ed in which the Arab-Israeli Knesset member Ayman Odeh wrote that he had not done enough to stop the war.

“I mean, none of us have done enough. An atrocity is taking place in our name,” Lander said. “If there is hope for democracy in Israel, Ayman Odeh represents it. And if he could find a path to continue to support hostage families, see the pain Jewish families are feeling, be a fierce voice for his people and then say, ‘I have not done enough to call out and stop these atrocities’ — boy, the least I could do is say so.”

The JFREJ event took place as speculation mounts about Lander’s future after his term as comptroller ends in December. His staunch support for Mamdani, as well as his decades of experience in public office, have fueled an expectation that he could wind up in City Hall if Mamdani is elected.

But this week, a poll showed Lander handily beating Rep. Dan Goldman in a primary for New York’s 10th Congressional District. Goldman has so far declined to endorse Mamdani, saying he wants to see “concrete steps” to assuage Jewish New Yorkers’ fears. 

“I have no comment on my next steps,” Lander said. “I still have a few more months as comptroller, and I’m thinking about the ways I can most usefully contribute at this moment.”

The mayor of Venice has condemned an alleged attack on American Orthodox Jews who said they were targeted by a group that shouted “free Palestine” and then proceeded to slap them.

The American couple, who were reportedly wearing traditional Orthodox clothing, were walking through Venice on Sunday night when the incident took place, according to Italian news agency AGI.

Three of the assailants, who were believed to be of North African origin, were apprehended, with two receiving expulsion orders and a third being deported, according to AGI.

“Venice is and must continue to be an open, welcoming, and safe city, where mutual respect forms the foundation of civil coexistence. The aggression suffered by two American citizens of Jewish faith is a serious and unacceptable act, which I condemn with the utmost firmness,” Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro said in a post on X.

The incident also drew condemnation from the Jewish Community of Venice. The city is home to one of the oldest Jewish ghettos in Europe, and currently has a Jewish population of around 450.

“Reiterating its condemnation of this vile and ignoble act, the Jewish community emphasizes that episodes like these certainly raise questions about Venice’s role as a welcoming city, while a climate of intolerance is emerging that today affects the entire Venetian community,” the statement read.

The incident follows another report of a Jewish couple being attacked in Venice last month.

The man and his pregnant wife were walking near the city center when three men began harassing them, calling the husband a “dirty Jew” and throwing water and spitting on them. One of the assailants later set his dog on the couple, but it bit into a cell phone in the man’s pocket, according to Venice newspaper Il Gazzettino.

The Venice incidents add to a spate of alleged antisemitic attacks across Europe in recent months, many but not all apparently motivated by opposition to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Among the many to generate headlines:

• An Israeli cellist said he was asked to leave a restaurant in Austria after he was overheard speaking Hebrew.
• Dozens of French Jewish summer campers were removed from a plane in Spain for allegedly engaging in “highly disruptive behavior,” which they said involved singing in Hebrew. (Spanish Transport Minister Óscar Puente referred to the children as “Israeli brats” on X in a post he later deleted.)
• Near Milan in July, a Jewish father traveling with his 6-year-old son was told to “go back to your country, murderers” before being pushed to the floor and repeatedly kicked, according to video of the incident. It was unclear what precipitated the confrontation. “The antisemitic situation is becoming unmanageable,” a local politician said at the time.
• The vehicles of Orthodox Jewish tourists from England were spray-painted with “Free Palestine” graffiti at a rest stop in the Alps.

In some alleged incidents, the circumstances of the conflicts were not clear. Still, the dizzying pace of reports of harassment and attacks has reportedly sparked some Israelis to reconsider their travel plans.

A recent study by the Israel Democracy Institute found that three quarters of Jewish Israelis and nearly two thirds of Arab Israelis who had plans to travel said their plans had been affected by reports of rising antisemitism and attacks on Israelis abroad. The rate was even higher for religiously observant Jews — those more likely to wear a kippah or otherwise be identifiable as Jews.