The friendship between Kurush Mistry and Sarah Reines is an unlikely one.

Mistry, 45, made headlines in November 2023 for covering up “kidnapped” hostage posters with anti-Israel ones. A viral video of the Upper West Side incident — which was published by a number of news outlets online — drew widespread ire and got him fired from his job as a Wall Street analyst.

Reines, meanwhile, is an associate rabbi at Temple Emanu-El on the Upper East Side, where advocacy for the Israeli hostages in Gaza has been part of the congregation’s mission since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

The incident could have made the pair into adversaries. But something else happened: Mistry sought to make amends with the Jewish community, beginning a path of repentance, known as teshuvah in Hebrew, that ultimately brought him to Reines’ office. Over the past 14 months, the two have developed a “deep friendship,” in Mistry’s words, characterized by honest and civil discussions about a subject that often lends itself to heated arguments and the fracturing of relationships.

And now, on Saturday evening, Mistry will be attending Reines’ Passover seder at her Upper East Side home.

“The seder is all about sharing ideas, questioning perspectives, debating, and it’s very hard to do that today,” said Reines, 56. “And I feel like my relationship with Kurush is a really powerful example of how that is possible.”

Inviting Mistry to sit at her 18-person seder table was important to Reines, who “wanted him to know that I consider him an important part of my circle,” she said. The rabbi also pointed out that she likes having people from different religious and ethnic backgrounds at her seder, as it invites people to “come to repeated words and rituals with fresh eyes and ears.”

Mistry and Reines first met over Zoom in January 2024 while Mistry was visiting his home country of India. Mistry had been living in New York City for nearly 20 years, but following the backlash to the viral video — in which he told the Jewish American man recording him to “go back to your country” — Mistry decided to “step away and reflect” with his family for a couple months in India.

“The first few days [after the incident] were very challenging,” Mistry said. “I believe that my personal details had been leaked somewhere online. Therefore I was receiving threatening phone calls, text messages. I even got physical mail with some sort of white powder in it.”

Mistry wanted to make amends and give people “a better sense of the person that I am, despite my actions that night,” he said. So he reached out to a Jewish woman he knew professionally, who put him in touch with Reines. And following their introduction over Zoom, the two made an appointment for Mistry to visit her office at Temple Emanu-El.

“I remember feeling like, if he can walk into — you know, Temple Emanu-El is intimidating to anybody,” Reines said of Emanu-El’s grand Romanesque Revival building, which is one of the world’s largest synagogues. “So that he could come into that space and walk into my office, that felt like a sign that he was really coming with a sense of contrition and a willingness to be open.”

For Mistry, his many months of “honest and respectful, and sometimes painful” discussions with Reines have broadened his perspective, he said. (Mistry’s former wife, Shailja Gupta, was also embroiled in the incident, but the couple has since divorced.)

“I would say that my concern for the plight of people I believe are suffering or oppressed is no less than it was at the time of the incident,” he said in a phone interview Thursday morning. “But I have a better appreciation for other people’s suffering, and that I shouldn’t cancel one out to appreciate the other.” (In the viral video, he had covered a hostage poster with a flyer that read, “Israel is an apartheid state and commits genocide.”)

What started as a single meeting in January turned into regular conversations every couple weeks in Reines’ office. “I saw a person who did something they regretted,” Reines said, “and was actually trying to learn from that — grow, rectify.”

She added, “I never once questioned meeting with him. To me it was an honor from the beginning.”

Reines outlined for Mistry the process of teshuvah, which includes confession, regret and a vow not to repeat the misdeed. As part of the process, Reines gave him materials to read about the history of Israel and prejudice against Jews, which Mistry said “definitely enriched my understanding of these complex issues.”

Since the incident, Mistry said he has also made an effort to do more work for Dorot, a social services agency, where he’d already done some volunteering prior to his brush with infamy, helping seniors use technology.

One moment that stood out for Mistry on his path to redemption was in September 2024, when Reines invited him to attend a protest together as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech at the United Nations. 

“I took a sign to that protest, which I believe had two parts to it: Stop the killing, bring home the hostages,” Mistry said.

His homemade sign included the colors of the Israeli and Palestinian flags melded together as a symbol of commonality. “I realized, as I was coming back from the protest, that it was cathartic, in a way, because this all started with me making signs,” Mistry said. “And I felt like I was doing this with a lot more thought and deliberation and in a much more balanced manner.”

Mistry added, “Short slogans are very amenable to our short attention span media coverage that we consume nowadays. But as I learned the hard way, they obviously can’t capture nuance, and they are not necessarily productive.”

Reines pointed out that her discussions with Mistry have helped her face shortcomings of her own. “He helped me realize that sometimes when I act emotionally to something like the word ‘genocide,’ I stop being able to absorb concrete information and have conversations,” she said. “Emotion can create walls in one’s own thinking.”

During last year’s Yom Kippur service, Reines delivered a sermon about Mistry and his process of redemption.

As for Passover, Reines said that redemption is “the very point” of the holiday. “It’s like Shabbat but on steroids,” she said. “ We celebrate and behave as if we are living in a liberated world, so that taste of what it would be like propels us forward to work for it.”

This year’s first-night seder will be a little different for Reines, who wrote her own haggadah. In addition to her family, the 18 attendees will include a number of guests who’ve never previously interacted, including a few non-Jewish ones.

Reines invited guests bring a dish that makes them think of their home, or the traditions in which they were raised. Mistry, who has attended two seders during his two decades in NYC, said he was “touched and honored” by the invite. He’s planning to bring a lamb dish he grew up eating — if his mother sends him the recipe in time, that is.

Reines said some parts of the Passover seder feel tough to reckon with in the current moment, like “celebrating freedom when there are hostages being held in Gaza,” she said, as well as saying “Let all who are hungry come and eat when we know there are Gazans and food is being withheld from them.”

Having Mistry at the table is “a sign that things can actually be different,” Reines said, “that there can be movement and growth and possibility.”

In advance of a pivotal court hearing this week in the deportation case of Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian protest leader at Columbia University, a judge demanded that the State Department lay out its case against him.

Now, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has done so, in a two-page memo that says “beliefs, statements, or associations” that he deems at odds with U.S. foreign policy interests are sufficient to justify deportation. It does not allege any criminal behavior and instead implies that Khalil’s behavior and statements were “otherwise lawful.”

Instead, Rubio wrote, “The public action and continued presence of ____ and Khalil undermine U.S. policy to combat anti-Semitism around the world and in the United States, in addition to efforts to protect Jewish students from harassment and violence in the United States.” (The memo includes the redacted name of another permanent resident facing deportation.)

The memo, first obtained by the Associated Press, cites the same Cold War-era law that Trump officials have pointed to to justify deportations of non-citizen activists who they believe pose a threat to the country’s national security interests.

The memo was filed Wednesday ahead of a hearing set for Friday to determine whether the government can continue detaining Khalil.

Khalil, who is a green card holder, was detained by ICE a month ago, the first in a wave of student activists whom the government has arrested and targeted for deportation. (Most of the people who have been told to leave the country were on student visas, which the State Department has broad latitude to revoke.) His case has sparked widespread protest and has split Jewish groups that, broadly, want to aggressively combat antisemitism but in many cases fear the erosion of civil liberties.

“After a month of hiding the ball since Mahmoud’s late-night unjust arrest in New York and taking him away to a remote detention center in Louisiana, immigration authorities have finally admitted that they have no case whatsoever against him,” two of Khalil’s attorneys, Marc Van Der Hout and Johnny Sinodis, said in a joint statement to the Associated Press. “There is not a single shred of proof that Mahmoud’s presence in America poses any threat.”

Rubio has repeatedly defended the deportation of people he deems Hamas supporters, including in a Senate confirmation hearing prior to his appointment as secretary of state. He has expressed the same sentiments after Khalil’s arrest.

“Now that you got the visa and [are] inside the U.S. and we realize you’re a supporter, we should remove your visa. If you could not come in because you’re a supporter of Hamas, you should not be able to stay. That’s how I view it,” said Rubio at the hearing.

President Donald Trump has selected a new special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, nominating a Miami businessman and fundraiser named Yehuda Kaploun to the role.

“Yehuda is a successful businessman, and staunch advocate for the Jewish Faith and the Rights of his people to live and worship free from persecution,” Trump said on Truth Social, announcing his selection. “With Anti-Semitism dangerously on the rise, Yehuda will be the strongest Representative for Americans and Jews across the Globe, and promote PEACE. Congratulations Yehuda!”

Trump’s announcement elicited a wave of sharply antisemitic comments on the social network, which Trump owns and is favored by his supporters. “No one believes Anti-Semitism is an issue but the Zionists. I will criticize our Greatest Enemy when ever I want,” wrote one commenter.

Said another: “Combat anti-semitism? Don’t people have the Constitutional right to like and hate who they like? What kind of name is Yehuda anyhow? Doesn’t sound American to me.”

Kaploun is affiliated with Chabad, the Hasidic Orthodox movement, and was a fundraiser and surrogate for Trump during last year’s campaign. He appeared with Trump at a ceremony in Florida to mark the one year anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

Asked before the election by Mishpacha magazine, an Orthodox publication, about whether he was eyeing a position in a potential Trump administration, he demurred. “I’m not thinking about a position,” Kaploun said in an interview. He added, “What’s important to me is to do everything in my power to help Trump win, so that we — Jews everywhere — can feel safer.”

The role, which requires Senate confirmation and was elevated in recent years to the ambassador level, is the United States’ top position related to fighting antisemitism and has responsibility primarily for what happens overseas. Kaploun, who initially got connected to Trump through Miriam and Sheldon Adelson, the Jewish Republican megadonors, offered a clear sense in the Mishpacha interview of where he believes the greatest threat to Jews lies.

“Democrats are afraid to even say the words ‘radical Islamic terror’ while Trump says it openly,” Kaploun said. “He speaks fearlessly about the threat of Iran and makes clear that its goal is to destroy the United States. This when Democrats refuse to even recognize the butchers of women and kidnappers of children as terrorists. How can you go along with that?”

He also presented a grim view of antisemitism in the United States. “Our situation is similar to that of Jews in 1930s Germany, on the eve of Kristallnacht,” he said. “They, too, lived in peace and quiet until the ground shook under their feet. And in the United States, the ground is already shaking.”

If confirmed, Kaploun would join an administration that has cited antisemitism in rolling out a range of new policies, including around canceling the visas of students involved in pro-Palestinian protests, freezing federal funding to colleges and universities and monitoring the social media feeds of immigrants.

He would succeed Deborah Lipstadt, a historian of antisemitism, who occupied the role in the Biden administration. During her tenure, the office expanded significantly and also broadened its focus to tackle antisemitism in the United States as well as abroad.

Trump’s antisemitism envoy during his first term was Elan Carr, a former deputy district attorney and Republican candidate in Los Angeles who now heads the Israeli-American Council.

Argentinian prosecutors have requested an arrest warrant for Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei over his alleged involvement in the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires.

Khamenei, who ascended to his position in 1989, was Iran’s leader at the time of the attack. It killed 85 people and was, at the time, the single deadliest attack against Diaspora Jews since the Holocaust. An Argentine court ruled last April that Iran and Hezbollah were behind the attack.

The lead prosecutor in the case, Sebastián Basso, argued in an Argentinian federal court that Khamenei was behind the decision to carry out the attack, and he did not have immunity from prosecution, Argentine newspaper Clarín reported Wednesday.

“It is the national judicial authorities who have the duty and the power to judge those responsible, regardless of their location and the social and political position they occupy in the territories where they reside,” said Basso, according to Clarín. He cited both Argentine and international law in his arguments.

Basso said that Khamenei “led the decision to carry out a bomb attack in Buenos Aires in July 1994 and issued executive order (fatwa) 39 to carry it out. It is also undeniable that Khamenei has always been, and continues to be, the main supporter of groups with military capabilities such as Hezbollah,” according to Clarín. Khamenei has previously denied allegations of Iran’s involvement in the attack.

Previous prosecutors had said Khamenei could claim immunity for the charges. More broadly, Basso’s request signifies Argentina’s shifting approach to Iran’s role in the AMIA attack, which it had allegedly once tried to downplay before last April’s ruling.

In 2013, Argentina took steps to jointly investigate the attack with Iran. Basso’s predecessor, Alberto Nisman, was assassinated in 2015, hours before he was set to present evidence that a former Argentine president had covered up Iran’s involvement in the bombing.

In 2021, Iran appointed two men to its government who were implicated in the bombing.

Donald Trump loves making dramatic pronouncements in his Oval Office meetings — and his revelation that the United States was entering talks with Iran was no exception. Sitting alongside Benjamin Netanyahu during the Israeli prime minister’s second White House visit, he told the world that, within days, the United States would open direct talks with Iran — Israel’s archnemesis.

The talks will focus on Iran’s nuclear program — which Israel, the United States and other countries have long said is meant to produce nuclear weapons. They will be the first direct negotiations between the United States and Iran in a decade, and will aim to replace an agreement that Netanyahu and Trump both reviled. 

Here’s how these talks came about, what might happen, and what it means for Israel. 

Why are the United States and Iran negotiating?

For decades, Israel and the United States have accused Iran of pursuing the bomb. In response, the United States has leveled waves of sanctions on the country, and assassinated one of its top generals. Israel has fought a shadow war against it — assassinating nuclear scientists, infecting Iranian systems with an advanced virus and employing other forms of subterfuge. 

Although Iran has said that it is not building a nuclear weapon, that claim has met widespread skepticism. Iran has enriched uranium to high enough levels in order to build a bomb, and successive warnings have said that the country is “closer than ever” to being a nuclear state. 

A nuclear-armed Iran would pose clear risks to Israel, a close U.S. ally that itself is assumed to have nuclear weapons. Iran has repeatedly called for Israel’s destruction, and funds a network of terror groups that attack it. Last year, Iran and Israel fought their first-ever rounds of direct combat. Iran also funded attacks on U.S. troops during the Iraq war.

Other neighbors of Iran, particularly Gulf states, also fear the idea of their regional rival possessing the bomb. 

Has this happened before?

Yes, most recently under President Barack Obama. His 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, negotiated alongside Russia, China and a number of European countries, traded inspections and curbs on Iran’s nuclear program for sanctions relief. It was considered Obama’s signature diplomatic achievement. 

Netanyahu hated it. He said it left Iran’s nuclear program in place and “paves Iran’s path to the bomb.” He campaigned against the deal extensively, castigating it in a wide variety of forums over many months. That effort culminated in a contentious address to Congress, arranged with the Republican speaker of the House, in which Netanyahu implored the body to vote the deal down. 

His campaign failed, but the following year another harsh Iran deal critic — Donald Trump — was elected president. In 2018, at Netanyahu’s urging, he withdrew from the deal and applied what he called “maximum pressure” in the form of tougher sanctions. 

In response, Iran ramped up its nuclear production; a few years later, President Joe Biden’s bid to resurrect the Iran deal failed.

If Trump hated the Iran deal, why is he negotiating a new one?

The president famously purports to be the master dealmaker, and there’s perhaps no region where he enjoys negotiating more than the Middle East. In 2020, he brokered normalization deals between Israel and several neighbors. 

Ahead of his inauguration this year, his team helped broker a ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s friend and chief envoy, who is Jewish, led Trump’s team in that negotiation. He will lead the U.S. team in the Iran talks as well. 

In 2020, the first Trump administration assassinated Iranian senior general Qasem Soleimani; the previous year, Trump had reportedly weighed a more extensive attack on the country before demurring. 

Now, he’s sent a letter to Iran’s supreme leader, and is extending an invitation to talk — while still nodding toward the possibility of military action. 

“Hopefully we can have a peace deal,” Trump said a month ago. “I’m not speaking out of strength or weakness. I’m just saying I’d rather see a peace deal than the other. But the other will solve the problem.”

What would be at stake in a deal, and what has changed? 

For one, Iran is weaker: Israel has decimated its allies Hamas and Hezbollah. Syria, in turn, is no longer led by Iranian ally Bashar Assad. Russia, another Iranian ally, is bogged down in its invasion of Ukraine. And U.S. strikes have aimed at the Houthis, an Iranian ally in Yemen. 

Trump’s advisers appear to be saying that this round of negotiations will aim to go farther than the Obama deal. Trump not only wants to monitor and limit the Iranian program, but to dismantle it. In exchange, Trump could offer sanctions relief, and Iran has floated the possibility of inviting U.S. investment.

“Iran has to give up its program in a way that the entire world can see,” Mike Waltz, the national security adviser, told CBS in March.

Trump also hopes to stem Iran’s ballistic missile program as well as its support for regional terror groups. So while the talks aren’t directly about the Gaza war, they could affect it. It’s possible that, in the wake of Oct. 7, 2023, Iran will be compelled, as part of a deal, to withhold its support for its “Axis of Resistance.”

How do Netanyahu and Israel feel about the talks?

Iran has no louder critic in the world than Netanyahu. For decades, he’s been globetrotting to speak out against the dangers the regime poses, seen by many to be acting as a present-day Winston Churchill facing down the greatest international threat of his day. 

He’s brought a picture of a cartoon bomb to the United Nations to illustrate the point. Year after year, he proclaimed that the biggest threats facing Israel were “Iran, Iran and Iran.”

He isn’t alone. The vast majority of Jewish Israelis opposed Obama’s Iran deal. And criticism of Netanyahu’s Iran policy, within Israel, focuses largely on his tactics, which his critics said were overly antagonistic toward Obama. In other words, there’s no pro-Iran caucus to speak of within Israel’s political mainstream. 

But this time, as opposed to 2015, in public Netanyahu is putting on a happy face. Trump is a close ally of the embattled prime minister, personally and ideologically, and Netanyahu almost never criticizes him in public as he did Biden or Obama. 

Sitting alongside Trump, Netanyahu refrained from criticizing the impending talks — and tried to shape their parameters. He said the only good deal would be one that mimics Libya’s surrender, in 2003, of its nuclear arsenal. 

“We’re both united in the goal that Iran does not ever get nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu said. “If it can be done diplomatically in the full way, the way it was done in Libya, I think that would be a good thing but whatever happens we have to make sure that Iran does not have nuclear weapons.”

What is Iran saying?

It’s insisting that it does not want nuclear weapons — its president said Iran is “not after” them — and pivoted to welcoming the benefits of a deal with Trump. 

“His excellency has no opposition to investment by American investors in Iran,” President Masoud Pezeshkian said in a speech in Tehran, referring to the supreme leader. “American investors: Come and invest.”

Iran said earlier this week that the talks would be indirect, contradicting Trump. And the country is also taking a threatening tone of its own: On Tuesday, Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi also referenced the possibility of violence. 

“Mark my words: Iran prefers diplomacy, but it knows how to defend itself,” he wrote on X. 

What happens if the talks fail?

Before Trump’s announcement, some Israelis were pushing for a strike on Iran, arguing that the time was ripe. Now, both Netanyahu and Trump are saying that could happen if the talks fail — and that Israel would take the lead. 

“If the talks aren’t successful with Iran, I think Iran’s going to be in great danger …  because they can’t have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said during his White House press conference with Netanyahu. He added that if the talks fail, “It’ll be a very bad day for Iran.”

Netanyahu sent a more explicit message on Tuesday, saying that if Iran “drags out” the talks, “then there is the military option. Everyone understands this. We spoke about this at length.”

And Trump reiterated the stakes on Wednesday  — adding that Israel would play a central role in any military action.

“They can’t have a nuclear weapon,” Trump told reporters about Iran, Reuters reported. “If it requires military, we’re going to have military. Israel will, obviously, be… the leader of that. No one leads us. We do what we want.”

To over 300,000 TikTok followers, Hayim Nissim Cohen was a rabbi who had taken in nine adoptive sons and documented their Jewish lives. But after one of the children spoke out about the sexual abuse that was happening off-camera, that illusion came crashing down.

On Monday, Cohen, 40, pleaded guilty in a Houston state court to four counts of sexual assault of a child and one count of indecency with a child. He was sentenced to four 40-year sentences with no parole for the sexual assault charges and an additional 15 years for the indecency charge to be served concurrently, according to the Houston Chronicle.

“You realize you are never going to get out of prison, you’re going to die in prison?” Judge Danilo Lacayo asked Cohen in Court, according to local CBS affiliate KHOU.

The crimes came to light in February 2023 when Cohen’s 17-year-old adopted son called into a podcast and reported that he had been sexually abused by Cohen since age 11. CPS intervened, and the six youngest children were removed from the home, according to KHOU.

Cohen was arrested in 2023, at a time when he had allegedly been faking a chronic illness. In social media posts, he can be seen using supplemental oxygen and a wheelchair, but when detectives took him to two hospitals, they found nothing wrong with him.

Cohen had also claimed that he grew up speaking Yiddish as a Hasidic Jew in Williamsburg, but was actually born with the name Jeffrey Lujan Vejil in Odessa, Texas in 1984. He changed his name later in life, but there is no evidence that he ever converted, according to The Times of Israel.

At times, Cohen claimed to be a rabbi. He also said, despite evidence to the contrary, that his nine adopted sons came from Jewish families. At the trial, he was still sporting payos, the sidecurls grown by Hasidic men, though he did not appear to be wearing a kippah.

“He changed their names in the adoption process and had them grow their hair and dressed them. He claims they speak Hebrew or Yiddish but I don’t think any of them do,” Sherry Chandler, a lawyer for another child abused by Cohen in 2019, told the Times of Israel. “He’s clearly not a rabbi. I think he woke up one day and said, ‘I’m Jewish,’ and went to Dallas County and had his name changed.”

One of the sons, Avshalom Cohen, was also arrested in 2023 and charged with sexual assault and human smuggling.

“I know you understand everything I’ve said to you from the beginning to the end,” Lacayo said, “You ran an interesting con, sir. You violated all these boys and you’re here today facing justice.”

As a historian focused on Jewish history for more than four decades, I was aware when I applied to the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Public Scholars program for support for my new book that the odds were not great. After all, I had in the past reviewed applications to the NEH from scholars, curators and filmmakers seeking funding for their projects, and I knew how many worthy endeavors were vying for a limited pot of federal funding.

But I was lucky: I got a grant, and my book, “Antisemitism, an American Tradition” comes out this fall.

My grant ended last August, which means I was narrowly not among the scholars told this week that NEH grants they had received had been canceled — by a federal government that has made fighting antisemitism its signature issue.

Indeed, this administration is defunding universities’ cancer research expecting this will resolve antisemitism — a laughable prospect. But if it cares so much about antisemitism, it should not go after the National Endowment for the Humanities. The NEH not only subsidized my book on the long history of antisemitism in the United States, it has a significant record of backing books, documentaries, and museum exhibitions about Jewish history and culture that counter antisemitic lies.

Related: Jewish cultural institutions reeling as Trump defunds arts and humanities

In recent years, the NEH funded translating Luis de Carvajal’s diaries. Traveling throughout 16th-century colonial Mexico, a land that barred Jews, de Carvajal secretly practiced Judaism until, arrested by the Inquisition, he died in its jail. The NEH supported translating the Yiddish stories written by Rokhl Brokhes (1880-1945) before the Nazis murdered her. Another award went to a book about spies in 1930s Hollywood who had uncovered a plot to kidnap and hang 20 prominent Jews and their allies, including Charlie Chaplin. They expected this to launch a nationwide pogrom.

An NEH grant helped Washington, D.C.’s Capital Jewish Museum plan its new exhibition which is built around the city’s oldest synagogue building. When that congregation, Adas Israel, dedicated its new house of worship in 1876, just in time to celebrate this nation’s centennial, Ulysses S. Grant became the first president to attend a synagogue service. He even donated $10, the equivalent of about $200 today.

Why would an administration battling antisemitism cripple an organization with a tiny budget — just $207 million last year — whose projects add to our knowledge about Jewish history and culture? This history is more essential than ever today to counter the rising tide of antisemitism in this nation.

Support for projects about Jewish history and culture are, of course, a small part of the funds the NEH has dispensed in the 60 years since it was established. It has funded book projects about New York’s Archbishop Francis Cardinal Spellman, the poet Robert Frost, and Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis. Its grants have enabled millions to view the Ken Burns films “The Civil War” and “The Vietnam War,” as well as a film about the history of comics.

The NEH has supported museums on the Underground Railroad and San Francisco’s Angel Island, the largest immigration station on the West Coast, as well as an exhibition about toys. It even provided funding to develop a smartphone app for visitors to the new World War I Memorial and a virtual reality game about the construction of the Hoover Dam, one of the great triumphs of American ingenuity.

Just as the NEH has funded projects to support Jewish history and culture, it has also backed projects spotlighting the array of cultures and heritages that make up America. Its funds helped develop an exhibition exploring Indigenous peoples’ heritage in Deerfield, Massachusetts; restoring damaged statues of the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass in Buffalo, New York; developing a digital history of Cuban Americans; constructing new space at Chicago’s Korean Cultural Center; and recording audio about humanities collections for the blind.

These may be precisely the stories this administration wishes to erase in its effort to recast the complicated, messy history of our nation’s past into a seamless narrative celebrating the accomplishments of great white men. But collectively, these projects narrate powerful, positive stories about this nation and its people.

So many of our ancestors came to these shores seeking refuge. They made America their home, becoming staunch patriots, titans of industry and business, government officials, soldiers, wives, and homemakers. In time, some of their descendants turned to the NEH to help them tell stories about these brave men and women of the past, their hopes, their dreams, their legacies. They are the men and women who made this nation great. We will lose their stories and this history if this administration succeeds in its plans to eviscerate the NEH.

Those whose grant contracts have been canceled now join the ranks of the federal workers who have been summarily let go, without reason, without cause. Like them, these creators are left stranded. As scholars, we realize that our experiences are just a tiny window into the chasm of this great calamity.

Individual creators are hurt and devastated. But the loss of the stories they would have told, including those that could have shorn up the struggle to stem the tide of antisemitism, will reverberate far into the future.

Six slates competing in the ongoing election for the World Zionist Congress in the United States are demanding election administrators disqualify two other slates following revelations of likely widespread voter fraud. 

The demand was made in a letter sent Tuesday to the election committee of the American Zionist Movement, the organization that oversees the election. The six slates that signed the letter represent a range of political and religious viewpoints.  

“The circumstances … are a huge embarrassment and a devastating blow which threatens the legitimacy of the elections,” said the letter, which was shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “The word that best applies here is ‘shanda’ — and at a moment when the entire Jewish world (and many others) are watching us.”

A unique institution originating in the 19th century, the World Zionist Congress gives Jews in the Diaspora a direct say in Israeli affairs and influence over a billion dollars a year in funding for Jewish causes. The election, which comes about every five years, is seen this year as a critical contest between competing visions for the Jewish state.

More than 123,000 votes for 21 slates have been cast halfway through the two-month voting period, according to the American Zionist Movement, which called the turnout “unprecedented.” (The tally is about equal to the total number cast in the last election, in 2020.) Voting takes place online through May 4, and any Jew primarily living in the United States who is over 18 and agrees to a set of Zionist principles can participate after paying a $5 registration fee.

The organization’s election committee notified slates in a letter on Monday that it is investigating suspicious patterns of voting involving some 2,000 ballots that were cast in support of two slates. The letter was leaked to eJewish Philanthropy, which reported on its contents on Tuesday.

A large number of the suspect votes were registered to the addresses of several Orthodox yeshivas and cast within minutes of each other. Many voters were tied to email addresses that appeared randomly generated or to anonymous prepaid debit cards. The two slates suspected of receiving fraudulent votes have not been named. 

The six slates that sent a letter to election administrators called on them to identify and disqualify the suspect slates and divulge more information about how the fraudulent votes were discovered. 

The letter was signed by ARZA, which represents Reform Judaism and Mercaz, which is affiliated with the Conservative movement. It was also signed by the liberal Orthodox slate, Dorshei Torah V’Tzion; Kol Israel, which is affiliated with the pro-Israel advocacy group StandWithUS and the Israeli American Council; the America-Israel Democracy Coalition, which represents Israeli expats; and three groups that make up the progressive slate Hatikvah.  

Herbert Block, AZM’s executive director, said he couldn’t comment while the matter was under investigation. 

“AZM is dedicated to ensuring a fair and transparent election and vigilant in identifying and stopping any fraudulent behavior,” he added.

The suspicious voting patterns are not the first election integrity issue to come up in recent weeks. Promoters of the Orthodox slate Aish Ha’am allegedly offered to reimburse voters their registration fee in violation of election rules, while Am Yisrael Chai, which seeks to represent young adults, has been accused of vote-buying after offering voters prizes in a raffle.

Nearly 1,000 active and retired reservists in Israel’s Air Force have called for their government to strike a deal to release Israeli hostages in exchange for an immediate end to the war in Gaza, arguing that the fighting endangers the captives’ lives as well as innocent civilians.

In response, the Air Force said it would dismiss any active-duty reservists who signed the letter, accusing them of using the force’s “brand” to voice their opinion.

“Refusal to serve is refusal to serve – even if it implied and in polite language,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. “Expressions that weaken the IDF and strengthen our enemies in wartime are unforgivable. This is a marginal and extremist group that is again trying to break Israeli society from within.”

The open letter from the reservists, issued Thursday and printed in Israeli newspapers, is one of the starkest signs yet of grassroots opposition to continued fighting in Gaza, which Israel’s government resumed in March after a two-month ceasefire that saw dozens of hostages go free. It comes on the same day as a poll that shows more than two-thirds of Israelis want the government to prioritize releasing the hostages over defeating Hamas, which is holding them.

Taken together, the petition and poll indicate that most Israelis would support stopping the war in order to free the hostages. The call from the Air Force reservists is especially significant in Israel, both because of the central role the Air Force plays in the Gaza war, and because it is considered the elite of the Israeli military. Protests like this have had an impact before: Prior to Oct. 7, the government paused its judicial reform in part following threats from pilots to shirk their reserve duty.

The petition “demands the return of the hostages home without delay, even at the cost of ending the war immediately.”

It continues, “At this point, the war principally serves political and personal interests, and not security interests. Continuing the fighting does not contribute to any of its stated goals and and will bring about the deaths of hostages, IDF soldiers and innocent civilians, and attrition among reservists.”

Dozens of Israeli hostages were released in the ceasefire that began in mid-January, and ended two months later. Since then, mass protests in Israel have criticized the resumption of the fighting and called on the government to prioritize the remaining 59 hostages — 24 of whom are thought to still be alive.

A poll released Thursday found that that sentiment has broad popular appeal in Israel. The survey by the Israel Democracy Institute  said 68% of Israelis want the government to prioritize bringing home the hostages over defeating Hamas, while 25% said to prioritize defeating Hamas. Around half of Israelis think accomplishing both goals is impossible.

The poll dovetails with other surveys showing that most Israelis would prefer to end the war if it means the hostages going free. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said both goals are important — though a number of hostage families have accused him of deprioritizing negotiations.

The Colombian Jewish community is reeling after an anti-Zionist rabbi was tapped to be the country’s director of religious affairs.

Richard Gamboa Ben-Eleazar was appointed to the post in Colombia’s Ministry of the Interior by Colombian President Gustavo Petro according to an announcement Gamboa made on X last Thursday.

He thanked Petro for “the opportunity to serve excluded and marginalized religious minorities from the Directorate of Religious Affairs, in the construction of a just and peaceful Colombia for all.”

But Colombia’s Jewish community does not recognize Gamboa as a rabbi, and Jewish groups have condemned him as an antisemite. He reportedly received his ordination from a Florida institution called the Esoteric Theological Seminary that advertises rabbinical degrees for $160. Gamboa’s LinkedIn displays an ordination certificate from the seminary.

Marcos Peckel, executive director of the Confederation of Jewish Communities of Colombia, expressed outrage over the appointment. Gamboa’s appointment comes after Petro severed diplomatic ties with Israel last May, accusing the country of commiting genocide in Gaza, an accusation Israel has denied.

“This man refers to Zionist Jews as heretics, apostates, and Nazis. That’s how he talks about us,” Peckel told The Media Line. “A person who speaks this way cannot be entrusted with the religious freedoms of Jewish citizens.”

Colombia’s Chief Rabbi Alfredo Goldschmidt also rejected the appointment of Gamboa, telling The Media Line, “We’ve had very good experiences with past religious affairs directors, usually evangelical leaders who respected all faiths. Gamboa has no such support—not from Jews, evangelicals, nor Catholics. He’s had clashes with all.”

Gamboa has castigated Israel and Zionism online. In a post on X in February, he wrote that Israel is a “neo-Nazi state” and said that “Zionism is an anti-Jewish, idolatrous, and apostate heresy.”

The Anti-Defamation League joined the chorus of Jewish groups denouncing the appointment, posting on X that his appointment would “threaten religious freedom and the security of Colombia’s Jewish community.”

The ADL also accused Gamboa of having “ties to extremist groups.” The Simon Wiesenthal Center said in a release that he and the ambassador representing Iran, Israel’s chief adversary, have had a close relationship.

Gamboa defended himself in another post on X, writing, “In the last 48 hours, my human rights have been violated in Colombia: religious freedom, right to honor and a good name, freedom of conscience… they have done so publicly and in my capacity as a HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDER!”