Journalists I know joke that the only Jewish historian they ever need to call is Jonathan Sarna.

 Jews and the Civil War? Sarna knows where the bodies are buried.

 Need a quote about Jews and bagels? Sarna will give you one with everything. 

 The history of American Jewish prayer? Amen. 

 That Sarna is quoted on so many topics is probably a sign of laziness on the part of the reporters, but it is also a testament to Sarna’s dominance in the field of American Jewish history. 

 The Joseph H. and Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University, Sarna has been a force in his field almost since he first got his doctorate at Yale University when he was 24. His magisterial 2004 book, “American Judaism: A History,” is considered the definitive work on the subject. 

 Now, at 70, Sarna announced he will officially retire from teaching duties after 35 years at Brandeis, and will focus on research and writing. He’s looking to complete a book about Mark Twain and the Jews, and has plenty of other projects in the works. The Twain book will be the third in a sort of 19th-century trilogy, following works on Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant. 

 “I’ve never met a professor who said, ‘Oh, I wish I’d gone to two more meetings,’” Sarna, who has survived a number of health scares over the years, said in a recent interview. “But I’ve known a lot of professors who say, ‘Oh, I wish I’d written this book or that article.’ I felt that whatever time I have, devoting it to research and scholarship would really be what I wanted to do, and I’ll let other people handle the university. There’s a lot of politics at universities nowadays.”

Sarna’s decision to step back has allowed him to enjoy a sort of victory lap. He received an honorary degree and delivered the undergraduate keynote address during this year’s commencement exercises at Brandeis — 50 years after he graduated there with a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in Near Eastern and Judaic studies. 

Last month the Maimonides Fund and the American Jewish Historical Society hosted a symposium in his honor, mostly featuring talks not by fellow academics but by rabbis and Jewish communal leaders who explained how his ideas and influence extended beyond the Ivory Tower. 

His academic contributions were celebrated, meanwhile, at a daylong event at Brandeis in May, featuring a number of leading American Jewish historians, including Michael Cohen of Tulane, Zev Eleff of Gratz College, Sylvia Barack Fishman of Brandeis, Pam Nadell of American University and Laura Liebman of Princeton.

In her remarks, Nadell spoke about one of Sarna’s most important contributions to the field: a series of books and articles that put antisemitism in the American context. In papers like “The Pork on a Fork: A Nineteenth Century Anti-Jewish Ditty” (1982) and “Anti-Semitism and American History” (1981), Sarna refuted the historians and Jewish leaders at the time who suggested that antisemitism was a brief and fading problem in American life.

He “carefully and with nuance demanded that American antisemitism had to be understood ‘on its own terms,’” Nadell said at the Brandeis symposium. “More than four decades later, in our very different moment, we must heed that clarion call to the particularity of the Jewish experience in the U.S.”

Sarna agrees that those were some of his most influential articles. “History has very much vindicated my cyclical approach to antisemitism, as opposed to those who felt that antisemitism, like anti-Catholicism and anti-Mormonism, would become simply a historical subject, a relic from the past,” he said.

Although antisemitism has hardly been the main focus of his scholarship, he returned to the subject again in his popular 2012 book “When Grant Expelled the Jews,” about a short-lived decision by the union general to expel all Jews under his military jurisdiction. Antisemitism was also the subject that sparked his interest in a career as a historian of American Jewish history. 

“I am probably the only person in the world who decided to become an American Jewish historian in high school,” said Sarna, who grew up outside of Boston, the son of Nahum Sarna, a renowned Bible scholar, and Helen Horowitz, a Hebraist and Judaica librarian. “When I went to Brookline High School, they allowed you in your senior year to write a kind of big research paper, and you could stay off campus and research. And I wrote the history of antisemitism in America, believe it or not, and I loved it. I was reading old books and learned a lot.”

That paper also had a sequel of sorts: In order to fulfill a weird requirement that driver’s ed students write a research paper, he wrote about the antisemitism of automaker Henry Ford. “The driver’s ed teacher told me he never had such a long and footnoted paper, and he gave me an A plus,” Sarna recalled. “There was only one little problem with my scheme, which was that it didn’t help you at all on the road test, which I failed and had to retake.” 

As an undergraduate at Brandeis, Sarna fell under the allure of the American Jewish Historical Society, which was then housed on the campus, and the researchers who used it. When he applied for a doctoral program, however, he sought out the best history program he could get into, not a Jewish college.

He wound up at Yale, which seemed interested in his niche. “They hadn’t had a student who was doing American Jewish history, and they wanted one, and I was the one,” he said. He studied with Sydney Ahlstrom, the great historian of American religious history, who helped Sarna, an observant Jew, place the Jewish experience within the scope of American religious history. 

“I was one of the very first people who came to American Jewish history with the knowledge of American religion. American religion had been a very Protestant subject for a very long time, and Jews shied away from it,” he said. “I met [Ahlstrom], and the idea of studying American religion with the man who had written a religious history of the American people was very exciting.” 

In his own teaching, Sarna said he wanted students to understand the parallels between American Judaism and other American religions. He calls a paper he wrote on the late 19th-century American Jewish awakening — which paralleled a religious revival among American Protestants — as “among my most influential articles.”

Another mentor Sarna cites is Jacob Rader Marcus, the rabbi and historian who founded the American Jewish Archives at the Hebrew Union College campus in Cincinnati. Marcus invited Sarna to HUC on a post-doctoral fellowship, and Sarna stayed for 11 years, before Brandeis came calling with the promise of a chair.  

 Marcus instilled in him the idea that a historian of American Jewish history needed to know the whole field, and that the story of Jews in America did not begin at Ellis Island. “In Israel, and also in some other universities, almost no attention was paid to American Jews until the coming of the East Europeans,” said Sarna. “I’ve written about the post-World War II era, but it’s never been as important to me as the work I’ve done on the early period. I’m very unusual in having published, literally, from the 17th century material until the present day.”

The results include a biography of Mordecai Manuel Noah, the 19th-century  journalist and diplomat who tried to establish a Jewish utopia in upstate New York; the rediscovery of a lost novel by the 19th-century poet, essayist and novelist Cora Wilburn; and, with Adam Mendelsohn, anthologies about Jews in the Civil War and in the Gilded Age. 

Sarna often worries about students who do not share this appreciation for the sweep of history, or who, he says, “read present-day morality into the past” — failing to acknowledge, for example, that “our horror at slavery was really not shared well into the 19th century.” That doesn’t excuse its practitioners, he said, but provides the context for writing perceptively about them.  

Sarna offered another example of students hesitating to write about topics they might consider politically suspect. For years Sarna urged students to consider writing a history of the rebbetzin, or the rabbi’s wife, and the quiet but important influence such women had on their communities. “I had [feminist] students who could have written that, but who said to me, ‘that represents everything we don’t want for ourselves, for our children. This is not a subject that we want to be part of,’” he said. 

(Sarna was gratified when Shuly Rubin Schwartz, now the chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, wrote “The Rabbi’s Wife: The Rebbetzin in American Jewish Life,” which won a 2006 National Jewish Book Award.)

Sarna is also worried about a strand of anti-Zionism among some in his field, and said that it is leading some scholars to exaggerate American Jewish opposition to a Jewish state, especially in the 1930s, or to misrepresent why Zionism captured the American Jewish imagination. 

“I lament in some ways that they’re two very, very different institutions that think about the issues so differently,” he said, referring to the Zionist and anti-Zionist camps. “It would be better, in a way, if students were exposed to multiple perspectives and really could understand why some dissipate.”  

He also laments how few positions are available in the academy. “And now with the federal cutbacks, I think there is a sense that it’s worse than before,” he said. “Even Harvard has more or less shut down all appointments there.”

The irony is that the Trump administration is targeting academia in large part in the name of fighting antisemitism. Sarna didn’t remark on that, but in a recent article in the Forward, he spoke as a historian about a split among Jewish leaders: those who have quietly accepted Trump’s purge of the universities, and those who think such moves are fundamentally anti-democratic.

About the former camp, Sarna told the Forward, because “there’s no agreement as to what the highest Jewish priorities should be, they’re going to go with supporting Israel and fighting antisemitism — knowing, I think, that there’s a price to pay for that.”

Sarna often engages in Jewish communal debates in ways that some academics prefer to avoid. “I always kept my hand in the community side of the field, in order to strengthen American Jewish life. That was a goal, which some people have argued is antithetical” the role of the scholar, he said. 

But Sarna is dedicated to the idea that a community should understand its past in order to make sense of its present. Eleff, the president of Gratz College, spoke about this at the Brandeis symposium honoring Sarna. “One of the striking characteristics of Jonathan’s writing is that all of the hours of looking and studying in archives, assembling all those bits and pieces, Jonathan always sees the big story, and he writes about the big story,” he said.

Sarna illustrated that point when I asked him if he had his white whale – a subject or artifact that has so far eluded him. He mentioned a report from the 1990s that he thinks broke the culture of American Jewish fundraising.

The paper, written by the McKinsey consulting group at the request of what was then known as the Council of Jewish Federations, urged the big Jewish fundraising outfits, for the sake of their bottom lines, to stop chasing the “small givers” and instead focus on the deep-pocketed machers and foundations. 

Sarna hasn’t been able to locate the document, but thinks that the federations that accepted its recommendations did not think about the big story:

“Those [small] donations were a statement of Jewish citizenship: ‘Once a year I identified with the Jewish community.’ Now we have a whole generation today of people who hardly know what the federation does and certainly don’t they’re citizens of that federation, because they’re not in a position to make those kinds of big donations.”

And that insistence — that history speaks to the present — is why he always makes himself available to reporters, said Sarna.

 “That’s not something every academic is comfortable with,” he said. “But there are things a historian can talk about and compare and put into perspective that someone just dealing with the moment can’t do.”

After facing criticism, President Donald Trump said he was unaware that the term “Shylock” was widely considered antisemitic when he used it to describe unscrupulous bankers during a rally Thursday in Iowa.

Trump was touting the benefits of the Republican omnibus legislation that had just passed. “No death tax. No estate tax,” he said. “No going to the banks and borrowing from, in some cases, a fine banker — and in some cases, Shylocks and bad people.”

Shylock is the name of the Jewish money lender in William Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” a character that has come to be seen as an archetype of the stereotype that Jews are greedy and money-grubbing. Contemporary stagings of the play routinely grapple with its antisemitic tropes.

Trump’s choice of words quickly drew criticism.

“The term ‘Shylock’ evokes a centuries-old antisemitic trope about Jews and greed that is extremely offensive and dangerous. President Trump’s use of the term is very troubling and irresponsible,” tweeted the Anti-Defamation League on Friday morning. “It underscores how lies and conspiracies about Jews remain deeply entrenched in our country. Words from our leaders matter and we expect more from the President of the United States.”

Confronted with the criticism, Trump — who has previously been accused of wielding antisemitic dog whistles and repeating antisemitic tropes — said he had never understood the term as antisemitic.

“I’ve never heard it that way,” he told reporters on Friday. “The meaning of Shylock is somebody that’s a moneylender at high rates. You view it differently. I’ve never heard that.”

Some of Trump’s critics said they believed Trump did understand the meaning of the term. “This is blatant and vile antisemitism, and Trump knows exactly what he’s doing,” tweeted Rep. Dan Goldman of New York, a Democrat.

Both Goldman and Jerry Nadler, another Jewish New York Democratic congressman, said Trump’s comment proved that Republicans are concerned about antisemitism only when it serves their political agenda. The Trump administration has cited antisemitism concerns in its effort to deport pro-Palestinian student protesters and penalize U.S. colleges.

“Today’s speech shows that antisemitism in the Trump Administration is the rule not the exception, and emanates from the very top,” tweeted Nadler, who said Trump had used “one of the most recognizable antisemitic slurs in the English language.” He added, “If Donald Trump were serious about fighting antisemitism, he could start with himself.”

Some Jewish conservatives, meanwhile, said they were willing to overlook the president’s use of the term. “Trump bombed Iran. He can say Shylock 100 times a day forever as far as I’m concerned,” tweeted John Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary.

Joe Biden, then vice president, decried “Shylocks” in 2014 to describe unscrupulous lenders who he said preyed on U.S. military personnel. After the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League criticized his comments, Biden said the criticism was right and that it was “a poor choice of words.” A social media account operated on Trump’s behalf called attention to the episode in 2020.

Half of registered voters in New York City say knowing that Zohran Mamdani supports boycotting Israel and has declined to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada” makes them less likely to vote for him in November’s mayoral election.

But a third said knowing Mamdani’s positions on the two issues made them more likely to vote for him, according to the poll released Thursday by American Pulse Research and Polling.

The poll, taken in the days after Mamdani’s Democratic primary win on June 24, found that Mamdani would win narrowly if the general election were held today and included Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who came second in the primary, as an independent.

Mamdani’s decisive win has ignited efforts by moderates and conservatives to figure out how to thwart him in November, with varying schools of thought over whether Cuomo should enter the race and risk dividing a voter base he shares with Mayor Eric Adams, who is running as an independent. The majority of respondents to the poll said they have an unfavorable impression of both men, whose previous electoral wins came as Democrats and who have been dogged by scandal.

American Pulse often polls on issues prioritized by conservatives and its lead pollster, Dustin Olson, is a regular guest on Fox News and NewsMax, right-wing TV networks.

“Mamdani has an early lead and a clear message, but deeper scrutiny may erode enthusiasm among general election voters,” Olson said in a statement. “It’s possible some voters already have buyer’s remorse.”

The questions in the New York City poll, which included 568 voters and had a margin of error of 4%, focused on issues that have disquieted Mamdani’s critics. It asked about whether Mamdani’s call for city-run grocery stores — part of his affordability platform — made respondents more or less likely to vote for him. It is also the first to ask voters about Mamdani’s stances on Israel-related issues, which have occupied the headlines since his come-from-behind win.

“According to NPR, Zohran Mamdani backs the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel and also refuses to condemn the phrase ‘globalize the intifada,’ which some interpret as a call to violence against Jews,” the question said before asking, “Does knowing this make you more or less likely to vote for Mamdani?”

About 20% of respondents said knowing his stances made them “much more likely” to vote for him, while another 11% said they were “somewhat more likely” to support him because of the stances. A much larger portion — 42.6% — said the stances made them “much less likely” to support Mamdani. Support for the positions was highest among younger voters ages 18 to 44 — aligning with recent polling on Israel issues unrelated to the mayor’s race — and among men.

Israel’s governing coalition is considering a bill that would significantly restrict who’s eligible for citizenship under the Law of Return, a foundational expression of Israel’s identity as a Jewish state. 

The bill would eliminate a clause in the law that extends the right of citizenship to individuals who are not considered Jewish under religious law but have at least one Jewish grandparent. An estimated 500,000 Israelis immigrated to the country since 1970 under this provision, which has become a source of contention within Israel and a point of friction with Jewish communities abroad.

A discussion on the bill is scheduled for Sunday at the Ministerial Committee on Legislation, which plays a critical gatekeeping role in Israel’s legislative process. A vote by the committee to support the bill would mean it advances to parliament with the backing of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

The bill’s author is Avi Maoz, the far-right lawmaker from the Noam party, who in March quit Netanyahu’s coalition in protest of what he described as the government’s failure to advance a sufficiently Orthodox and nationalist agenda. The ministerial committee is also set to review a bill by Maoz to ban discussion of LGBTQ issues in classrooms.

Maoz and his allies argue that expanded eligibility for immigration serves to dilute Israel’s Jewish character. 

“In its current form, the Law of Return allows even the grandson of a Jew to receive immigrant status and rights, even if he himself, and sometimes even his parents, are no longer Jewish,” says an explanatory note attached to Maoz’s bill. “This situation means that the law is being exploited by many who have severed all ties with the Jewish people and its traditions, and in effect empties the law of its original intention, which was to open the country’s gates to the Jews of the Diaspora.”

Similar or identical bills have been introduced in recent years by other members of Netanyahu’s government, including fellow Likud party lawmaker Shlomo Karhi, Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich and influential far-right politician Simcha Rothman, according to the explanatory note. Israel’s haredi Orthodox parties, which are also part of Netanyahu’s coalition, historically have opposed the “grandparent clause” as well. 

Supporters of the grandparent clause say it upholds Israel’s identity as a refuge for anyone with Jewish ancestry, especially those excluded by Orthodox definitions. The clause was added in 1970 partly in response to the Nazi Nuremberg Laws, which marked for persecution anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent. 

Many also see the clause as critical for welcoming Jews from the former Soviet Union, where decades of suppression left many unable to meet religious definitions but still connected, often deeply, to their Jewish heritage.

Under traditional halacha, or Jewish law, a person is considered Jewish only if their mother is Jewish, or if they formally convert to Judaism. Religious parties have also fought for years to reserve the authority for conversions to Orthodox rabbis. 

In the Diaspora, there is strong support for maintaining the grandparent clause among major Jewish organizations and non-Orthodox movements, according to Stuart Weinblatt, a prominent Conservative rabbi and the chairman of the Zionist Rabbinic Coalition.

“I believe very strongly that issues such as security and borders should be decided by the sovereign democratically elected government of Israel, but there are other issues, which have an impact on Jewish peoplehood, which is worldwide, and it’s important to consider the wider consequences,” Weinblatt said. 

He hopes those on the other side can come to see prospective immigrants as a boon to Israel rather than a threat, and find a way to embrace them despite the complications posed by religious law. 

“There are people who have this connection to Judaism and the Jewish people, and instead of looking at closing the door, we should be welcoming them back into the fold, capitalizing on their desire to make their future in the homeland of the Jewish people,” he said.

A federal court ruled that the family of the man who firebombed a demonstration in Boulder, Colorado in support of the Israeli hostages can be deported.

The suspect, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, who is an Egyptian national, and his wife and five children were living in the United States illegally. The family was detained by ICE two days after the June 1 attack. 

Wednesday’s ruling overturns a previous district court ruling blocking the family’s deportation. 

“This is a proper end to an absurd legal effort on the plaintiff’s part. Just like her terrorist husband, she and her children are here illegally and are rightfully in ICE custody for removal as a result,” said Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security,  in a statement. 

“This terrorist will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. We are investigating to what extent his family knew about this heinous attack, if they had knowledge of it, or if they provided support to it,” the statement continued.

Soliman’s family is currently being held in a detention center in Texas.

Lawyers for the family argued their detention was unconstitutional because they said it was intended to punish them for Soliman’s actions.

The decision comes one week after the death of 82-year-old firebombing victim Karen Diamond, Soliman currently faces over 70 charges for the firebombing attack, including first-degree murder, first-degree assault and 12 counts of committing a hate crime.

Efforts to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas appeared to be gaining momentum Thursday, with Hamas reportedly signalling satisfaction with assurances outlined in a Washington-backed proposal.

The proposal comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to meet with President Donald Trump Monday, with the U.S. leader increasing pressure on Israel to end its 20-month military offensive in Gaza.

“Israel has agreed to the necessary conditions to finalize the 60 Day CEASEFIRE, during which time we will work with all parties to end the War,” wrote Trump in a post on Truth Social Tuesday.

“I hope, for the good of the Middle East, that Hamas takes this Deal, because it will not get better — IT WILL ONLY GET WORSE. Thank you for your attention to this matter!,” the post continued.

United States Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee signalled enthusiasm over the potential for the agreement, posting a screenshot of Trump’s statements along with the caption, “excellent!”

The current deal would include the release of 10 living and 18 deceased hostages over a 60-day ceasefire, with Hamas agreeing to forgo public hostage release ceremonies and Israel agreeing to cease military operations as long as talks are ongoing, according to the Times of Israel. The final proposal will be delivered by Egypt and Qatar, according to Trump.

An unnamed official told Saudi news outlet Asharq that Hamas was satisfied with the current deal, and is expected to deliver its response to the proposed framework on Friday, according to the Times of Israel.

Another ceasefire between Israel and Hamas launched in January fell through after two months. Since then, Trump has pressured Netanyahu to reach another ceasefire agreement.

But as Hamas and Israel appear close to striking a new deal, Israel has maintained that it must be allowed to resume its offensive against Hamas, while Hamas demands a deal to permanently end the fighting.

In a statement, the Palestinian militant group said it was studying new ceasefire offers received from mediators Egypt and Qatar, but that it aimed to reach an agreement that would end the war for good, according to Reuters.

Ahead of the alleged ceasefire agreement, ultranationalist Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir told public broadcaster Kan that he would not support the current agreement.

“I won’t allow this reckless deal to happen,” he says. “I hope that Smotrich will join forces with me. We were elected with 14 mandates by people who do not want us to surrender in Gaza,”

“We must not stop the war without victory,” Ben Gvir continued. “What do you think will happen if we stop the war now? That Hamas will hand out flowers?”

In a post on X Wednesday, Netanyahu reiterated Israel’s intentions to eradicate Hamas, writing, “We will continue until victory.”

“There will be no Hamas. There will be no Hamastan. We’re not going back to that. It’s over,” the post read. “We will not stop until we free all the hostages and restore security to the residents of the south and all Israeli citizens.”

The acting president of Columbia University apologized to members of the school community Wednesday after leaked text messages showed she had suggested the removal of a Jewish trustee.

“The things I said in a moment of frustration and stress were wrong. They do not reflect how I feel,” Claire Shipman wrote in a private email obtained by Jewish Insider and referring to an exchange that occurred before she was named acting president.

The apology comes after the House Committee on Education and Workforce sent a letter to Shipman Tuesday lambasting her for leaked correspondences in which she criticized Shoshana Shendelman, a Jewish member of Columbia’s Board of Trustees and vocal critic of the university’s handling of antisemitism allegations.

Columbia faced intense pressure from the federal government to address allegations of discrimination by some Jewish and Israeli students.

In the messages, which were dated from 2023 and 2024, Shipman also separately suggested the appointment of an “Arab on our board.”

““I have apologized directly to the person named in my texts, and I am apologizing now to you,” Shipman wrote in Wednesday’s email. “I have tremendous respect and appreciation for that board member, whose voice on behalf of Columbia’s Jewish community is critically important. I should not have written those things, and I am sorry. It was a moment of immense pressure, over a year and a half ago, as we navigated some deeply turbulent times. But that doesn’t change the fact that I made a mistake. I promise to do better.”

“One thing I hope salacious headlines will not obscure — my deep commitment to fighting antisemitism and protecting our Jewish students and faculty. Board members who have worked with me for more than a decade know that antisemitism, and the culture on our campus, was a priority well before October 7th, as do colleagues at the university, and personal friends,” the email continued.

Shipman also included a link to the steps the school was taking to address antisemitism on its campus as the school enters its fourth month of negotiations with the Trump administration after the federal government cancelled $400 million in grants to the school over campus antisemitism in March.

Last Friday, a group of around six Orthodox rabbis called New York City Assembly member Micah Lasher for a conversation about the then-presumptive Democratic nominee in the city’s mayoral race, Zohran Mamdani.

The call centered on concerns the rabbis and their communities had with a candidate who had refused to condemn the pro-Palestinian slogan “globalize the intifada” and also supported the boycott Israel movement.

According to one of the rabbis on the call, Shaul Robinson of Lincoln Square Synagogue, the callers felt they had been heard.

“On Friday I together with many Orthodox Rabbis from the neighborhood were invited to a conference call with one of our local (Jewish) New York Assemblymen to ‘strategize’ about what to do about the Mamdani candidacy,” Robinson wrote in a Facebook post. “The politician pledged his support for our community, offered to be a sounding board and source of strength in this incredibly threatening time.”

But days after meeting with Lasher, Robinson and other rabbis on the call were taken aback to see Lasher endorse Mamdani, his fellow Assembly member, in a post on X, leading Robinson to write on Facebook that he was appalled.

“And today, this self same politician endorsed Mamdani’s candidacy. That both appalls me, and motivates me to leave no stone unturned. We aren’t going to let New York City become a year round Glastonbury style Hate-fest against the Jewish community,” Robinson wrote on June 29, not naming Lasher and referencing a British music festival where a punk rap duo led anti-Israel chants last weekend.

Robinson’s Facebook post about the call and Lasher’s endorsement reflect the anxiety surrounding Mamdani’s candidacy, which to many pro-Israel Jews and their allies represents a mainstreaming of the kind of rhetoric around Israelis and Palestinians that puts Jews in danger, or at the very least flouts years of pro-Israel consensus on the part of many city politicians. By posting about the call and his disappointment in Lasher’s endorsement, Robinson sparked a heated conversation about what a Jewish politician like Lasher owes to the worried Jews in his district, which includes the Upper West Side.

In his endorsement, Lasher wrote that “Zohran has the talent to breathe much-needed new life into City government and the personal gifts to bring New Yorkers together around a positive vision for the future,.”

Lasher also acknowledged the concerns of his Jewish constituents, adding that he would “continue to be among those urging Zohran to speak with clarity when it comes to rhetoric — including the invocation or celebration of intifada — that makes Jewish New Yorkers, or any community in our city, feel threatened.”

“As he moves into a position of citywide leadership, I hope that Zohran can come to better appreciate the deeply personal and historical importance that the survival of Israel as a Jewish state holds for Jewish New Yorkers,” wrote Lasher.

Robinson’s post garnered over 100 comments, with the majority sharing his concerns about Mamdani’s candidacy and frustration with Lasher’s endorsement, whose District 69  encompasses Manhattan Valley, Morningside Heights and portions of the Upper West Side and West Harlem.

Lasher replied to Robinson’s concern in a comment under the post, and included his endorsement of Mamdani.

“Your feedback was important to me, even if ultimately we may be in different places about how to proceed. This is a difficult situation for the Jewish community and we are all trying to navigate it as best we can,” wrote Lasher. Reached by JTA, Lasher said he would “let the statement I issued speak for itself.”

For another rabbi on the call Friday, the endorsement by Lasher came as less of a shock.

“Robinson obviously felt that it was very surprising,” Rabbi Adam Mintz of Kehilat Rayim Ahuvim, a Modern Orthodox community he founded on the Upper West Side, said in an interview with JTA. “I’m a rabbi. I don’t really know his politics. He met with the rabbis. He was sympathetic to the rabbis. He didn’t tell us whether he was going to endorse Mamdani or not, and he went and he endorsed Mamdani. You know — it’s politics.”

Mintz said that the reaction of the other rabbis on the call to Lasher’s endorsement was “mixed,” but despite the controversy, he said that the next step for New York rabbis was to meet with Mamdani, who has a huge advantage going into the general election.

“If it’s true that probably Mamdani is going to win, I think that we also, at the same time, need to be reaching out to Mamdani and to his people to try to make sure that we can get commitments on certain things that are not only important, but they’re vital to the Jewish community,” said Mintz.

For Mintz, key issues he hoped to press Mamdani on were funding for security for Jewish institutions in New York and the preservation of the annual Israel Day parade on Fifth Avenue.

Mintz said that while the Jewish community would feel “more comfortable” with a candidate who was pro-Israel, “there’s a distinction between being anti-Zionist and being antisemitic.”

“I think there’s a question about, what do we expect from the mayor of New York City, meaning he’s made anti-Zionist statements. But he hasn’t said bad things about the Jews. He actually seems to have good relationships with many within the Jewish community who he interacts with,” said Mintz.

Robinson, when reached by JTA, said he was planning for a family celebration this week and wouldn’t be able to comment beyond his Facebook post by press time.

Lasher, a first-term assemblyman who was endorsed by a pro-Israel PAC in his election bid last year, appears to share many of the views of liberal pro-Israel voters.

“I feel a deep, personal connection to Israel and to New York’s Jewish community, and am deeply concerned about rising anti-Semitism,” Lasher wrote in a statement to the Columbia Spectator last year. “I want a lasting peace for Israelis and Palestinians, I want the hostages to be returned, I want the war to end, and I would like to see Hamas out of Gaza and Netanyahu out of the Knesset.”

Pro-Israel voters and mainstream Democratic politicians who typically court the pro-Israel vote have been parsing Mamdani’s actions and rhetoric since his upset victory in the primary. U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler was quick to endorse Mamdani, while assuring voters that he would discuss Mamdani’s Israel views with him. Nadler’s fellow Jewish pol, U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, at first offered praise to Mamdani on his big win, without mentioning the Israel issue, but later through a spokesman issued a statement condemning the phrase “globalize the intifada,” saying it has “dangerous implications.”

For his part, Mamdani, who led a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine as a college student, denies that he is antisemitic. Under scrutiny over his refusal to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” the candidate addressed the concerns of Jewish voters in an emotional press conference earlier this month..

“It pains me to be called an antisemite. It pains me to be painted as if I am somehow in opposition to the very Jewish New Yorkers that I know and love and that are such a key part of the city,” Mamdani said at the time.

Many of the comments on Robinson’s Facebook posts reflected the frustration of the pro-Israel voters who follow him. “Jewish people who endorse radicals promoting Islamic terrorism and murder should be named and shamed, and completely shunned from the Jewish community,” wrote one commenter. “It’s not a joke to normalize blowing up Jewish kids in music cafes, which literally is what happened during intifada.”

“The opportunism and lack of integrity are striking but sadly not surprising these days,” wrote another. “When will the likes of Schumer, Nadler and Lander” — the Jewish mayoral candidate who cross-endorsed with Mamdani — ”realize that jumping on the illiberal bandwagon is not the path to salvaging the Democratic party?!”

Mintz was more measured in his remarks, saying that Jewish leaders like him may have no choice but to work with Mamdani should he be elected.

“We don’t want him to be anti-Zionist, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that the Jews are at risk, and therefore I believe that our job as rabbis is, since it looks like Mamdani will probably win, that we should be reaching out to Mamdani, to his team…and we should be making sure that the Jewish community in New York City is going to be protected,” he said.

Early in the humid afternoon on Wednesday, New York State Assembly member Harvey Epstein stood at a table on the corner of East 7th Street and Avenue B, handing out free vegan hot dogs. A day earlier, he was confirmed the winner of the primary election to represent Manhattan’s District 2 in City Council.

Wearing a navy T-shirt proclaiming “Plant Powered Dad,” Epstein, along with representatives and volunteers from animal rights activist groups PETA and NYCLASS, stood outside his district assembly office, calling out to passersby, “Would you like a free vegan hot dog?”

“During Thanksgiving we did a tofu turkey giveaway, and during Christmas we did a vegan roast,” Epstein told the New York Jewish Week. “And it made sense for Fourth of July to do vegan hot dogs.”

Hot dogs and Independence Day go together like peanut butter and jelly, of course. But there was a symbolism to the giveaway that was hard to ignore: To secure his spot on the ballot this fall, Epstein had just beaten four other candidates — including, notably, disgraced former New York Rep. Anthony Weiner, who in 2017 pleaded guilty to transferring obscene material to a minor.

The 58-year-old Epstein, who is Jewish and ran on a platform centered on housing and affordability, was endorsed by the Working Families Party, winning the final round of ranked-choice voting with 56.7% of the vote. In November, he will run against Republican Jason Murillo, but as the Democratic candidate in deep-blue New York City, Epstein is all but certain to win.

Weiner, meanwhile — who was the subject of awkward profiles during his unlikely comeback bid — only made it through the first round, with 10.3% of the votes. (Weiner’s ex-wife, Huma Abedin, a former Hillary Clinton aide, has also garnered a lot of media attention of late, for a very different reason: In June she married Jewish philanthropist Alex Soros, the son of billionaire and prolific political donor George Soros.)

Asked whether the hot dog giveaway had anything to do with Weiner, Epstein said no.

“It is kind of funny though,” Epstein said. “We never even thought about it till this morning, when someone brought it to our attention.”

A note in a special newsletter from The City Wednesday morning drew the connection between his opponent’s name and the hot dogs: “He trounced Anthony Weiner, and now he’s giving out vegan wieners!”

Epstein told the New York Jewish Week that he has been a vegan since his student days at Ithaca College, where he served as Hillel president. Before that, he grew up in a Conservative, kosher observant home in Wantagh, Long Island, where he attended Levittown schools.

“So I guess I’ve been kosher my whole life,” he said.

Epstein and his wife, Anita, are members of the East End Temple on 17th Street, where their two children, Leila and Joshua, had their bar and bat mitzvahs. Epstein has lived in the East Village for about 30 years, where the family also resides with their 11-year-old rescue dog, Homer.

“I call myself an agnostic Jew,” said Epstein, who in February 2024 was among five Jewish elected officials in New York who signed an open letter condemning Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack in Israel while also condemning “the actions of the current Israeli government.”

Epstein’s campaign for City Council caught the attention of the wider American public when it was spoofed in an episode of “Saturday Night Live” last November. In the spot, comedian John Mulaney, wearing a bald cap, portrays Epstein, and repeatedly insists that he isn’t the former movie producer and convicted sex offender Harvey Weinstein, nor is he the late sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein, nor is he some abominable combination of the two.

“Listen, is my name ideal? Of course not,” Mulaney’s Epstein says in the sketch. “I share names with two of the most notorious perverts of all time. You think I don’t know that? But thankfully, I’m a different guy.”

Epstein, a regular “SNL” viewer, told The New York Times in November that he woke up the following morning to hundreds of text messages telling him to watch the episode.

“So I watched it and I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, that’s me,’” the real Epstein told The New York Times. “It was, like, ridiculously funny. I couldn’t stop laughing.”

But he didn’t stop there. He took the opportunity to drum up support for survivors of sexual assault. “All joking aside,” Epstein shared on X, “I hope my newfound followers will consider donating to @RAINN, who do extremely valuable work supporting survivors.”

A former lawyer and tenant organizer who has served in the state legislature since 2018, Epstein attributes his victory in his city council campaign to old-fashioned hard work.

“I worked hard and I won,” Epstein said. “People voted for me more than they voted for other people. And I have a long history in this community. People know that and respect that.”

On Wednesday, as a small crowd gathered on the otherwise quiet street, locals seemed to enjoy the chance to meet with their political leadership, if only for a minute.

“It’s been great,” Epstein said. “People have been happy and joyful and taking food. It’s a little slower than other events we’ve had, just because a lot of people are away around the holidays, but it’s been fun.”

“I think that it’s very nice that [the] candidate is coming up and talks to people and shares his ideas, and how he’s looking to make the city better,” said Taisiia, a young woman living in the East Village who declined to share her last name. “That’s great to see someone we’re voting for in person to just — it’s always good to know [who] the person you’re voting for is, you know, see the smile and maybe eyes.”

One couple, a 20-something-year-old young man and woman walking hand-in-hand, passed the table and asked what the hot dogs were for. Volunteers at the table told them they were with Harvey Epstein’s office.

“I voted for Harvey Epstein!” the man said.

“Is that you?” the man asked, turning to the victor. “Oh my God, I voted for you!”

“You get two hot dogs!” Epstein joked.

Incendiary rapper Ye, who was formerly known as Kanye West, has had his visa cancelled in Australia over a recent song release titled “Heil Hitler.”

The announcement came Wednesday after Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said officials had reviewed his visa status following the controversial song’s release in May.

Ye is currently married to Bianca Censori, an Australian architect, and had been “coming to Australia for a long time,” Burke told national broadcaster ABC on Wednesday. “He’s got family here and he’s made a lot of offensive comments that my officials looked at again.”

“It wasn’t a visa for the purpose of concerts. It was a lower level and the officials still looked at the law and said you’re going to have a song and promote that sort of Nazism, we don’t need that in Australia,” Burke said of the visa cancellation.

“We have enough problems in this country already without deliberately importing bigotry,” Burke continued.

The announcement comes as Australia faces an increase in antisemitic incidents. In Australia last year, according to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, there were 1,713 antisemitic incidents, compared to 1,200 in 2023.

Last December, a synagogue in suburban Melbourne, Australia was set ablaze and two synagogues in Sydney were defaced with swastikas and other antisemitic language in January.

Following the release of the song — which includes the chorus line “All my n****s Nazis, n***a, heil Hitler” — Ye appeared to repent for his previous antisemitism.

In May, the morning after the deadly shooting of two Israeli embassy workers in Washington D.C., the rapper took to X to say he was “done with antisemitism.”

Ye’s Australian visa cancellation also follows the cancellation of the U.S. visas for Bob Vylan, a British punk band that led thousands of concert-goers at the Glastonbury music festival in chanting “Death, death to the IDF” last weekend.

Far-right pundit Candace Owens also faced visa cancellations from Australia and New Zealand last fall, with Australia rejecting her request for a visa over remarks in which she denied Nazi medical experimentation on Jews in concentration camps during World War II.