Israel announced that it had “attacked near the Presidential Palace in Damascus” in order to warn the new Syrian government against harming the country’s Druze population.

The Syrian government condemned the strike, which is Israel’s latest military action in Syria. After the fall of dictator Bashar Assad last year, Israel occupied a strip of territory in Syria, on its border, and has said it will remain there indefinitely to prevent attacks on its territory. It has also conducted airstrikes in the country, including, according to Syrian state media, late on Friday.

The strike near the president’s residence, announced Friday morning by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz, came after violence targeting the Druze population in Syria. Israel is also home to a Druze minority, many of whom serve in its military.

“This is a clear message to the Syrian regime,” the announcement said. “We will not allow the deployment of forces south of Damascus or any threat to the Druze community.”

Israel has also admitted several Syrian Druze for medical treatment, and on Friday Netanyahu met with Sheikh Mowafaq Tarif, an Israeli Druze leader.

Last week, at a university known for its diverse population, more than a dozen students sat on the floor of a campus building for 10 minutes holding photos of Palestinian children killed in the war in Gaza. 

Five days later, their group was suspended through the end of the semester for staging an unauthorized protest. 

It wasn’t in the Ivy League, and ICE agents weren’t about to raid the dorms. It was the latest dustup over the Gaza war at the University of Haifa, where Jewish and Arab Israeli students have at times clashed in ways that echo the campus drama in the United States. 

The group that held the sit-in was the school’s chapter of Standing Together, the joint Jewish-Arab left-wing activist group. The group, which has emerged as one of the most prominent antiwar voices in Israel since Oct. 7, 2023, has faced criticism from Jewish Israelis who accuse it of betrayal and Palestinians who accuse it of normalizing Zionism. 

Now, one of the student activists says the hammer has come down at Haifa over an action that felt so minor that the group didn’t even bother seeking a permit. 

“It wasn’t a protest,” said Eliah Levin, a second-year University of Haifa student. “It was showing solidarity, but it was silent, it was peaceful.” 

The protest occurred on April 23, the eve of Yom Hashoah, Israel’s Holocaust remembrance day, and was one of multiple demonstrations that week by Standing Together, according to Israeli media. A few days earlier, the Times of Israel reported, police had attempted to restrict protests such as the one in Haifa, but later allowed them to move forward.  

The school said in a statement that the group had held two public demonstrations without prior authorization, including the sit-in event last Wednesday, which violated the school’s regulations.

“The university administration is committed to maintaining public order on campus and thus sees this violation as a very serious matter,” the school said in an emailed statement.

But Standing Together has rejected the university’s allegations, saying that while it did not seek permission prior to the sit-in, the activity did not warrant a permit because it was silent and still.

The Haifa protest drew opposition from Btsalmo, a right-wing activist group that filed a complaint with the university administration, according to the Israeli outlet Walla, and called for a permanent ban on Standing Together. 

“An organization that chooses to publicly break the law and regulations and to incite against IDF soldiers who are their classmates should be shut down permanently,” said Btsalmo leader Shai Glick, according to Walla. “We will keep working to shut down and stop the incitement on campuses in general and the University of Haifa in particular.”

Days after the protest in Haifa, Btsalmo urged its followers to protest another action of Standing Together — nationwide screenings of a joint Israeli-Palestinian memorial ceremony. One of those protests erupted into a riot at a Reform synagogue in the Tel Aviv suburb of Raanana where protesters barged into the synagogue and injured attendees and police officers. 

Alon-Lee Green, the co-director of Standing Together, said the punishment at Haifa was a challenge to due process and freedom of expression. 

“Without any warning, without any hearing, without any process, we just got a letter announcing us that…we’re not allowed to continue to operate in the university until the end of the year,” said Green.

“They feel as if the democratic spaces are shrinking across the country, and now they’re also shrinking in the academic institutes, a place that should be the front of the discussion, of the academic discussion, but also of freedom of speech,” he added. “They feel as if it is also directed against the Palestinian students that were very much a part of this campaign.”

During the protest, Levin said several Palestinian students approached the activists to thank them for their solidarity.

“I heard a lot of Palestinian students coming up to us and saying thank you and appreciating it and seeing it as a very important act of solidarity and showing the pain of war and the price of war,” said Levin. “But the only voices that are allowed to be heard, both online and on campus, are the right wing voices, and so they are very loud and very aggressive.”

Tensions have flared in recent years at Haifa, whose campus enrolls the largest proportion of Arabs of any Israeli university. In January 2024, when the school re-admitted eight Arab students who had been suspended for posting “terrorist supporting” content on social media, some Jewish students protested the decision. 

Levin said that her group regularly faces opposition from peers — many of whom have served as military reservists during the war. She said she understands their objections but that she remains committed to voicing her protest. 

“I think for the Israeli students to walk past what we did and see that, I empathize [with] that, I think it’s hard,” said Levin. “It’s a time now where we have to get used to the fact that this is political. Voices will be heard. You can’t silence us anymore. And we’re going to have to learn how to live with this.”

When news broke that two Israeli nationals were found murdered on the same day in Los Angeles this week, a string of social media accounts posted nearly identical messages warning, “They are literally HUNTING down Jews.”

The killings came at a time when reports show surging antisemitism in the United States. In recent years, Los Angeles has been the site of dueling pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel protests, along with multiple violent scuffles between demonstrators. In early 2023, a man targeting Jews in L.A. shot two men exiting synagogue on consecutive days and later that year, there was a home invasion that appears to have been motivated by antisemitism. 

“It’s terrifying. These do seem like targeted attacks,” Jennifer Feldman, a local resident living near one of the murder sites, told Los Angeles magazine. “Two men with ties to Israel killed on the same day feels frightening to say the least.”

But in this instance, several days into the investigations, and following the arrests of three suspects in one of the killings, there appears to be no indication that the murders were linked. Nor is there information on the motivations of the perpetrators.

The Los Angeles Times, citing unnamed sources in the LAPD, reported that the two killings are not connected. 

The Secure Community Network, a group that coordinates security for Jewish institutions nationwide and monitors for antisemitic threats, said it is in the fact-gathering stage and has nothing yet to share about the situation. Los Angeles’ Jewish federation did not respond to requests for comment. 

Aleksandre Modebadze was found first, following a 911 report by an identified woman. He was bound and beaten to death inside his home in the Woodland Hills neighborhood. He was a 47-year-old Israeli who had been living in the United States for 15 years, according to what neighbors told the Jewish Journal. 

(A retired amateur wrestler of the same age and nearly identical name has represented the country of Georgia at the Olympics, though it is unclear if it is the same person.)

LAPD later announced the arrest of three suspects in Modebadze’s murder, all Georgian nationals, with the help of the FBI Fugitive Task Force: Paata Kochyashvili, 38, Zaza Otarashvili, 46, and Besiki Khutsishvili, 52. They have each been charged with murder and are being held on a $2 million bail. 

Less than 12 hours after finding Modebadze’s body, police officers responding to a request for a welfare check in a different part of Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley discovered Menashe Hidra’s body in his fifth-floor Valley Village apartment. He had a puncture wound to the head. Hidra, a businessman known as Menny, has been identified as the brother of the warden of Israel’s Nitzan Prison, Moshe Hidra, according to the Jewish Journal.

Police have released footage of a person they believe broke into Hidra’s apartment from an adjacent vacant unit. The possible suspect was described as a 30-40-year-old Hispanic male, with black hair, standing 5 feet 6 inches to 5 feet 9 inches, and weighing between 180 and 200 pounds.

The Los Angeles Police Department told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency it has no comment beyond the information it has already released.

President Donald Trump’s proposed federal budget for fiscal year 2026 asks for a litany of cuts — from reductions in basic government functions to the elimination of what he calls “woke programs.”

But there’s at least one area where Trump wants to expand: The document includes plans for an American version of Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system — called the “Golden Dome.”

One line of the proposal “makes a down-payment on the development and deployment of a Golden Dome for America, a next-generation missile defense shield that would protect the U.S. from missile threats coming from any adversary,” the document reads.

It’s part of Trump’s proposal for a massive $113 billion increase in Department of Defense spending, a jump of 13%, amid widespread cuts elsewhere. 

The “Golden Dome” proposal builds on Trump’s longtime praise for Israel’s system, which detects and intercepts incoming missiles while they are in the air. It is funded by U.S. assistance and is a key piece of Israel’s defenses against missile fire from adversaries such as Hamas and Hezbollah.  

Trump has repeatedly stated his desire to replicate the system for the United States, and signed an executive order shortly after taking office calling on the military to develop an “Iron Dome for America”.

He introduced his own “Golden Dome” spin on the concept during his address to Congress in March, when Trump asked the legislative branch to fund a “Golden Dome missile defense shield to protect our homeland.”

He added moments later, “Israel has it, other places have it, and the United States should have it, too.”

It’s unclear how the Trump administration would replicate such a system, given that the United States is far larger and does not face a comparable missile threat from the country’s neighbors. 

But Trump isn’t the only national leader talking about borrowing the concept. South Korea, which faces a nuclear threat from the adjoining North Korea, is building its own version.

And, according to Democrats in Congress and The New York Times, the person spearheading the project could be Trump’s multibillionaire governing partner, Elon Musk. The Times reported that Musk’s company SpaceX would be a principal beneficiary of increased spending, in the form of military and space-oriented contracts. SpaceX manufactures both rockets and surveillance tech, two essential components of such a defense system.

Musk’s business interests have benefited from Trump’s actions since he returned to office, even as Musk has sought to massively slash the size of the government.

This week, dozens of House Democrats called for an investigation into Musk’s role in the procurement process for the “Golden Dome.”

Congress must still approve the presidential budget request to implement it. 

Dozens of bands defended Kneecap’s “freedom of expression” after the rap group faced criticism for publicly condemning Israel and appearing to support terror groups.

“This past week has seen a clear, concerted attempt to censor and ultimately deplatform the band Kneecap,” reads the statement, signed by nearly 40 bands including The Pogues, Thin Lizzy, Dexys, Pulp and Massive Attack.

“In a democracy, no political figures or political parties should have the right to dictate who does and does not play at music festivals or gigs that will be enjoyed by thousands of people,” the statement said. It urged government officials and music executives to stop seeking to “silence” Kneecap.

The statement by the bands, posted on Instagram on Wednesday, came 10 days into a controversy swirling around the Northern Irish group’s statements:

• On April 20, Kneecap projected “F— Israel, Free Palestine” onstage at Coachella, the giant California music festival.
• On April 23, Sharon Osbourne called on Kneecap to lose its U.S. visas due to the display. She was one of multiple Jewish celebrities to criticize the band.
• On April 25, Kneecap defended its activism in a post and denied being antisemitic. “We do not give a f*ck what religion anyone practices. We know there are massive numbers of Jewish people outraged by this genocide just as we are,” the statement read.
• On April 28, Ireland’s prime minister called on Kneecap to “urgently clarify” whether it supports Hamas and Hezbollah, after video surfaced of a band member cheering, “Up Hamas, up Hezbollah” while draped in a Hezbollah flag last year.
• Later that day, Kneecap posted, “Let us be unequivocal: we do not, and have never, supported Hamas or Hezbollah.”
• The group is also being investigated by British police for the statements.

The Wednesday statement by the bands did not refer to Israel, Hamas, Hezbollah or the war in Gaza, stating instead that political speech should be “irrelevant” to whether Kneecap is given space to perform.

“The question of agreeing with Kneecap’s political views is irrelevant: it is in the key interests of every artist that all creative expression be protected in a society that values culture, and that this interference campaign is condemned and ridiculed,” the statement said.

A Jordanian national living in Florida was sentenced this week to six years in federal prison for attacking a series of businesses, including a solar farm, for their perceived support of Israel, the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement.

Hashem Younis Hashem Hnaihen, 44, had destroyed several solar panels at a facility in Wedgefield in June 2024, causing over $450,000 in damage, and left a letter threatening to use explosives to cause further damage, according to the department. 

He was charged after allegedly leaving similar letters at a propane gas distributor in Orlando and, according to local reports, other area businesses, including two Starbucks locations and a McDonald’s, breaking the windows of some of these establishments.

Hnaihen’s letters, which he addressed to the United States president and government, threatened to “destroy or explode everything here in whole America. Especially the companies and factories that support the racist state of Israel.” He was arrested in 2024 in a combined effort between the FBI, local and state police.

The Justice Department said Hnaihen was living illegally in Orlando. Court filings in the case described Hnaihen’s solar farm attack as bearing signs of premeditation and sophistication, intended to cause maximum damage to the equipment.

“Threatening to commit mass violence against American citizens and targeting businesses or institutions for destruction will not be tolerated,” U.S. Attorney Gregory W. Kehoe said in a release announcing Hnaihen’s sentencing. 

Maitland, Florida, where Hnaihen targeted a McDonald’s, is also home to a Jewish community center, Jewish day school and Conservative synagogue, all located blocks from the site.

Weeks after it was shut out of Germany’s new government, the far-right party Alternative for Germany has been designated as an extremist group by the country’s domestic intelligence agency. 

The move is another blow to the party, known as AfD, following its unprecedented second-place finish in national elections earlier this year. The party has a history of minimizing the Holocaust and using extremist rhetoric that has worried many Jews. AfD has received vocal support from senior Trump administration figures including Vice President J.D. Vance and Elon Musk.

The designation by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, known as BfV, was made in an 1,100-page report published on Friday. The report found that AfD, which traffics in Euroskeptic and anti-immigrant rhetoric, is a racist and anti-Muslim organization. 

The head of an umbrella organization for German Jews voiced support for the decision in a statement.

“We have long warned against the AfD as the parliamentary arm of the growing extreme right in Germany,” Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, wrote on X. 

Schuster added that AfD “provides a political home for antisemites, nationalists, and enemies of democracy. AfD representatives — be it through important positions on committees or similar — must never be allowed to assume governmental functions or even gain access to security-relevant information.”

The findings give the spy agency more leeway to monitor the party’s activities, including with the use of informants, and could lay the groundwork for a ban from government. AfD is expected to challenge the decision in court. 

The party had previously challenged an earlier BfV designation labeling it an entity suspected of extremism, but lost that case. 

AfD leaders called the new extremist designation a “blow against democracy.” Other right-wing European politicians, including Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, rallied to the AfD’s defense. 

Germany is not the only country in Europe where far-right politicians are facing official restrictions. Austria’s far-right party was also excluded from that country’s governing coalition earlier this year.

And Romania’s presidential elections will be held again this weekend after the country annulled the results of the initial vote, citing irregularities and evidence of a Russian influence operation. The victorious candidate in that vote, who praised a Romanian antisemitic fascist leader, has since been removed from the ballot, though far-right parties are still expected to do well in this weekend’s election. 

Days after firing eight Joe Biden-era appointees from the board of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, including former second gentleman Doug Emhoff, President Donald Trump tapped eight new members.

Among them are shock jock Sid Rosenberg, who was a Trump surrogate during last year’s campaign, and Rabbi Pinchos Lipschutz, the founding editor and publisher of Yated Ne’eman, a leading haredi Orthodox publication. Alex Witkoff, son of Trump’s diplomatic envoy Steve Witkoff, was also on the list. 

They will replace Emhoff and a number of Biden administration officials, including Susan Rice, Tom Perez and Ron Klain, all of whom Trump abruptly dismissed from the board this week.

“This Council has the important task of preserving the memories and stories of the loved ones whose lives were robbed in one of the darkest moments in History. NEVER FORGET!” Trump wrote in the announcement late Thursday on his social media platform Truth Social.

The eight new names will join 41 other members currently sitting on the council, including a number of other Biden appointees, the Washington Post reported. The board oversees the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Board members have often been political appointments and serve five year terms. It is highly unusual to dismiss groups of members midway through their terms.

Rosenberg, a longtime personality on conservative AM radio, is a fierce Trump defender who spoke at an October campaign rally for the president held at Madison Square Garden. During that profanity-laced speech, Rosenberg cracked a joke about parallels to an infamous 1939 pro-Nazi rally held at the same venue.

Rosenberg has also advocated heavily for Israel in recent months, making several visits to the country. He interviewed Trump live from Israel on the one-year anniversary of Oct. 7, 2023, and was touring Israel when the president appointed him to the board this week — a juxtaposition he remarked was “surreal.”

In comments to Israeli media, he added that the appointment “isn’t just a personal milestone — it’s a chance to make a real impact in the fight for memory, education, and justice. Especially now, when Jew-hatred is rising and history is being distorted, I’m ready to step up in an even bigger way.”

The list of appointees also included Barbara Feingold, a board member for the Republican Jewish Coalition; Betty Schwartz, who previously served on the board and is the daughter of a survivor who was one of the Holocaust museum’s founders; Ariel Abergel, who has worked for Fox News as well as in the first Trump White House; Robert Garson, president of the American Association of Jewish Lawyers; and Fred Marcus. 

“At this time of high antisemitism and Holocaust distortion and denial, the Museum is gratified that our visitation is robust and demand for Holocaust education is increasing,” the museum told the Post in a statement. “We look forward to continuing to advance our vitally important mission as we work with the Trump Administration.”

On a Thursday night in downtown Manhattan, eight people sat around a table, in an intimate, closed-off room. There, a sushi chef delicately prepared a meal that included 11 nigiri, sashimi and a hand roll.

It was an omakase meal, a trendy — and often expensive — Japanese dining experience that has exploded in popularity over the last decade in New York City. It’s an indecisive customer’s dream: The chef picks the entire menu as well as the order in which customers eat it, one piece at a time. 

There was an air of luxury to the meal — diners were instructed on how to eat each piece to maximize flavor; the chef used a blowtorch to lightly char the madai, or sea bream — as guests chatted with one another between courses as servers poured us sake. 

It felt like a taste of the culinary high life, except for one small detail: The omakase meal wasn’t taking place in one of the dozens of upscale sushi bars and omakase spots across the city. Instead, it took place in the back room of a Chabad house in Manhattan.

The dinner was the opening night of Fins and Scales, a new initiative that brings kosher omakase meals to select Chabad houses across the country, starting with The Chabad Loft at the Kavanah Space in Greenwich Village. Designed to be “the perfect bridge between the ultimate foodie experience and Jewish life,” according to its website, Fins and Scales operates on a pay-what-you-wish model and is a project of Chabad Friends, an organization whose aim is to bring more people to Chabad. 

“We want to increase the flow of traffic,” said Michael Sinensky, co-founder of Chabad Friends. Referring to the marketing term for generating consumer interest and turning that interest into a sale, “We’re like a lead-gen tool for Chabad.” 

In this case, however, a “sale” means attracting the participation of less observant Jews who may feel “intimidated” by the religiousness of Chabad, according to Sinensky’s co-founder, Elizabeth Pipko.

With omakase, Pipko said, the idea is that “someone might come in [for sushi] on a Wednesday, meet the rabbi, meet people and feel so comfortable they come back on Friday for Shabbat for the first time.”

Of course, offering secular activities within a traditional Jewish space isn’t a brand-new idea. According to Marc Lee Raphael, author of “The Synagogue in America,” so-called “synagogue-centers” — Jewish spaces that offer both prayer and secular activities like swimming pools and basketball courts — are a uniquely American trend that peaked in the interwar period, first started by the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan. 

The idea, according to Raphael, is that “people who play together will pray together,” he said, noting that, in some ways, upscale omakase meals are simply a 21st-century version of the trend. 

“It seems like Chabad [Friends] — they probably aren’t influenced by Mordecai Kaplan specifically — but by the idea that if you come to the restaurant, you might also pop into the sanctuary,” Raphael said.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Hosted by Linnea Sage (@thejewishdatinggame)

Chabad is known for its ability to engage unaffiliated Jews. The movement has built a global brand over the decades, making initiatives such as Mitzvah Tanks and massive public menorah lightings during Hanukkah synonymous with the brand.

Chabad houses, too, are an integral part of the Hasidic Chabad-Lubavitch movement. A sort of combination of a Jewish community center and a synagogue, Chabad houses are run by a rabbi husband and his wife, and they offer programming that includes classes, prayer services and Shabbat and other holiday meals. (The “house” in Chabad house is also literal — typically the couple and their children live in the space, too.)

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, known as the Rebbe, who was the Chabad-Lubavitch movement’s leader from 1951 until his death in 1994, called for “the establishment of new Chabad houses wherever Jews live,” according to Chabad.org. New ones are established every year, in increasingly far-flung locales: In 1994, there were 1,325 Chabad houses; today, there are some 5,000.

The idea to serve sushi at Chabad houses was born out of experience: Sinensky is also the founder of SimpleVenue, a hospitality group that owns the local omakase chain Sushi By Bou. While he’s overseen kosher omakase pop-ups in the past, Fins and Scales is the first time that his business will operate fully kosher omakase locations. In addition to the Greenwich Village pilot, they’re planning to expand to other Chabad houses in the city, as well as Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington D.C. 

Though Fins and Scales officially operates on a “give what you can” basis, there’s a suggested donation of $150. Proceeds go toward Chabad Friends, which is a subsidiary of Worldwide Friends Foundation, a nonprofit that aims to provide “humanitarian and tactical aid where it’s needed, when it’s needed,” according to its website.

“Someone’s going to give us $1,000 because they were so inspired by it, and someone’s gonna give us $18,” Pipko said. “In the end, it’s all going to even out.”

She added, “It’s such a rough time for people in general, and I don’t want someone to not be able to experience it.”

In addition to Fins and Scales, Chabad Friends is launching a series of initiatives that includes a matchmaking service and online Torah classes. They’ve also gotten big names including comedian Michael Rapaport and musician Matisyahu, who formally left the Chabad movement in 2007, to sign on as co-founders.

Pipko previously worked as a national spokesperson for the Republican Party and first met Sinensky when she was organizing Donald Trump’s visit to the Ohel — Schneerson’s gravesite — on the anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. But she said after the meal on Thursday that Chabad Friends has “no political tie whatsoever.”

“I have worked in politics for a very long time, I’m proud of the work I’ve done, but my Judaism will always come first and will always be separate,” Pipko said. “I hope to God that everyone that comes here does not think about politics at all, and leaves that at the door.”

(The same night of the Fins and Scales launch, politics were front and center outside Chabad’s global headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn: The far-right Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was visiting, and pro-Palestinian protesters clashed with Jewish counter-protesters on the streets outside 770 Eastern Parkway.)

At the first of four seatings on Thursday evening, after the 13th and final item of the meal — a fatty tuna hand roll with sesame and scallion — Chabad Loft’s Rabbi Yakov Bankhalter poked his head in to say hello and meet everyone around the table, who represented a mix of Jewish influencers, event organizers and New York Jewish Week staffers.

Among the guests was Linnea Sage, who hosts the Jewish Dating Game — a live, interactive matchmaking show that we covered back in December — and her husband, Paul Skye Lehrman. She’d been offered the seats after Sushi By Bou sponsored a dinner for a winning couple on her show.

Sage said her favorite item was the fatty tuna. “It’s always my favorite,” she said. “And it did not disappoint.” 

(My personal highlight of the evening was when one diner asked the chef, Alex, for the name of a particular fish. He responded: “Jason.”)

Sage said she loved the “intimate” vibe and chatting — and, of course, playing Jewish geography — with the other guests. 

Ultimately, Pipko said, “We’re bringing Jews together through the one thing we have, which is faith — which I don’t know if enough people are pushing nowadays.”

Jill Sobule, the Jewish pop singer whose hit “I Kissed A Girl” topped charts in the 1990s, has died at 66.

The cause of death was a fire at her home outside Minneapolis, her publicist announced late Thursday. Sobule had been due to perform in Colorado on Friday.

Sobule, who grew up as the only Jewish student at her Catholic school in Denver, broke new ground when she released “I Kissed A Girl” in 1995. The song chronicled a same-sex flirtation between two women and arrived at a time when queer narratives were rare in pop culture. Sobule, who later came out as bisexual, said it was the kind of song she wished she had been able to hear when she was a teen.

The same year, her song “Supermodel,” satirizing teen culture, found success after it was included in the hit movie “Clueless.” (The movie, focused on a Jewish teenager in Beverly Hills, is getting a new life now with a TV series.)

Sobule grew up as what she told Lilith Magazine was as a “Denver Jew, third generation from the Old Country,” saying that her family practiced a secular and perhaps sanitized version of Judaism. “We were to Judaism,” she told the magazine in 2023, “what Olive Garden was to Italian restaurants.”

She also recalled that her first stage performance was as “Miss Hanukkah and Queen Esther” in a school production when she was in first grade. After her turn atop the pop charts, she would return to Jewish themes in a wide array of musical and stage projects.

She was a repeat participant in the Downtown Seder, a musical Passover performance held annually in New York City.

She performed in a revue of “Fiddler on the Roof” songs at a Jewish music festival in New York in 2007 alongside the Klezmatics and Theodore Bikel, who was synonymous with the lead character Tevye.

And in 2016, she made headlines by composing the music for a new staging of “Yentl,” the Isaac Bashevis Singer story about a gender-bending yeshiva student propelled into the popular consciousness by the 1986 movie of the same name starring Barbra Streisand.

Sobule said she valued “Yentl” as a depiction of transgenderism but had been struck by learning that Singer was unhappy with the movie and sought to address his objections by having the music come from “a Jewish chorus” instead of being sung by the characters.

“I think he would approve of my music,” she told NPR at the time. “I really do, because it keeps the spirit of the play, and it has a sense of humor. I think he actually would like it because it doesn’t feel intrusive.”

And in 2022, she played both a cantor and the rabbi’s wife in “A Wicked Soul in Cherry Hill,” a staging of the true story of the New Jersey rabbi convicted of arranging the murder of his wife. In a play abhorred by the family of the real victim, she delivered the “standout performance,” according to a review in the Los Angeles Times. (The rabbi died last year.)

Sobule’s latest project was “F–k 7th Grade,” an autobiographical musical about being queer in middle school that was well reviewed during its off-Broadway run in New York City. She had been scheduled to perform songs from the musical in Denver on Friday, in a venue that will now host an informal memorial service.