Douglas Emhoff, the Jewish former second gentleman, was fired from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council Tuesday along with a number of other board members appointed by former President Joe Biden.

Emhoff, Kamala Harrs’ husband, was the first Jewish spouse of a vice president, one of the most prominent Jewish figures in the Biden administration and a leading national voice in fighting antisemitism. He criticized the firings, which were reported in The New York Times Tuesday, as a slight to the Holocaust’s victims.

“Today, I was informed of my removal from the United States Holocaust Memorial Council,” Emhoff said in a statement to the Times. “Holocaust remembrance and education should never be politicized. To turn one of the worst atrocities in history into a wedge issue is dangerous — and it dishonors the memory of six million Jews murdered by Nazis that this museum was created to preserve.”

Emhoff was appointed to the council in January by former President Joe Biden, shortly before the end of his term. Typically, a council seat has a tenure of five years. There are 55 board members appointed by the president, 10 from the House of Representatives and the Senate, and three more from the president’s cabinet.

Emhoff took on the role after serving as the face of the Biden White House’s efforts to combat antisemitism. He launched the initiative that culminated in Biden’s national strategy to counter antisemitism and took a high-profile working trip to Jewish and Holocaust sites in Poland and Germany.

Jewish critics of the Trump administration castigated the decision to dismiss Emhoff. Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, said the move was of a piece with other efforts that politicize the fight against antisemitism.

“This administration appears to be doing everything in its power to turn antisemitism into a political wedge — and it makes Jews, and everyone, less safe,” Spitalnick wrote in reaction to the news in a post on Bluesky.

Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, called the decision “unprecedented and reprehensible” in a statement. She added, “Membership on the Museum board is a solemn non-partisan obligation, which should not be viewed through a political lens.”

Emhoff was dismissed alongside Ron Klain, Biden’s Jewish White House chief of staff; Tom Perez, the former labor secretary; Susan Rice, Biden’s top domestic policy adviser who also took part in its efforts to combat antisemitism; and Anthony Bernal, a senior adviser to Jill Biden.

The officials were told of their immediate termination from the council in an email Tuesday morning, days after Yom Hashoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, according to the New York Times.

“On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as a member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council is terminated, effective immediately,” wrote Mary Sprowls, who works in the White House Presidential Personnel Office, in an email obtained by the Times. “Thank you for your service.”

Days before the dismissal, in commemoration of Yom Hashoah, Emhoff posted photos from his trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau on social media.

“On Yom HaShoah, we remember the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust and honor the survivors who carry forward their stories,” he wrote. “I will never forget my visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau—that indelible memory fuels my continued commitment to fight antisemitism and hate in all forms.”

The Irish rap group Kneecap denounced Hamas and Hezbollah after Micheál Martin, the Irish prime minister, called on them to “urgently clarify” their stances.

The group is from Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom, and U.K. police have also announced that they are investigating the group.

Martin’s call and the investigation come after the group ignited criticism and scrutiny with its anti-Israel performance at the U.S. festival Coachella earlier this month.

Critics of the performance, which included a projection reading “F— Israel,” began calling attention to a video on social media showing a Kneecap band member at a concert last year draped in a Hezbollah flag and cheering, “Up Hamas, up Hezbollah.” In February, the group tweeted a photo of a member reading a book of statements by the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, whom Israeli killed last year, while wearing a balaclava.

“Let us be unequivocal: we do not, and have never, supported Hamas or Hezbollah,” the group wrote in a post on X on Monday night. “We condemn all attacks on civilians, always. It is never okay. We know this more than anyone, given our nation’s history.”

The group’s statements have since been parodied on X. On Tuesday, one woman who had posted the video of Kneecap cheering Hamas and Hezbollah tweeted a photo of herself reading a book titled “How to Be Parisian” in view of the Eiffel Tower, along with the caption, “Let me be unequivocal: I do not, and have never, travelled to Paris.”

Ireland and its leadership are known for vocal advocacy for Palestinians, and last year, the country recognized the state of Palestine over Israeli objections. But Martin stressed that supporting Hamas and Hezbollah is “unacceptable.”

“Both Hamas and Hezbollah have views that are absolutely — not just views, but participated in terrorist activities and appalling killing of innocent people, as witnessed on Oct. 7,” said Martin to reporters. “But it’s not clear to me that they do, that Kneecap does support Hezbollah and Hamas. And I think it’s been asserted that they have made commentary in support of both. I think they need to urgently clarify that.”

In the United Kingdom, showing support for banned terrorist organizations is a crime. U.K. police have announced they are investigating that video along with another of a concert from 2023 in which a band member says, “The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP.”

The group said the video clip was deliberately taken out of context and was “exploited and weaponised.”

Several Jewish voices criticized Kneecap following the Coachella performance, with Sharon Osbourne calling on the Trump administration to revoke Kneecap’s work visas ahead of its upcoming U.S. tour.

On Friday, prior to Martin’s statement, Kneecap defended its activism in another statement on X, writing that it “faced a coordinated smear campaign.”

“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. “What we care about is that governments of the countries we perform in are enabling some of the most horrific crimes of our lifetimes — and we will not stay silent.”

Harvard University’s president has apologized for the campus climate over the last year and a half, in a letter accompanying a long-awaited report from a university task force on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias.

The task force found that Jewish and Israeli students at Harvard experienced pervasive “shunning” and were relentlessly targeted for their identities by both peers and faculty in the days and months after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, according to the report, released Tuesday.

“I am sorry for the moments when we failed to meet the high expectations we rightfully set for our community,” wrote President Alan Garber, who convened the task force. He continued, “Harvard cannot — and will not — abide bigotry.”

The 311-page report lands 16 months after the committee first formed — and days after the Trump administration publicly called for its release. The school also published a parallel report, authored by a task force Garber convened on Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian bias. The two groups jointly collected nearly 2,300 responses to a campus climate survey, with the antisemitism task force also conducting listening sessions with around 500 Jews on campus. 

The detailed reports (the Islamophobia one runs 222 pages) arrive as the Ivy League school is locked in a fierce legal battle with the White House, which has pulled billions of dollars in federal funding to the university, citing its failure to manage antisemitism. In response, Harvard has sued the administration, which has also threatened to revoke the school’s tax-exempt status. 

The school delayed the reports’ release amid the sparring, according to the Crimson, the student newspaper; a Harvard representative declined to comment on the reports’ timing to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Task force co-chair Derek Penslar, director of Harvard’s Jewish Studies program, also declined to comment.

Garber praised both reports’ release in an accompanying letter to the campus community, in which he promised to establish “a research project on antisemitism” as well as “support a comprehensive historical analysis of Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians at Harvard.” He also pledged to review school disciplinary policies and find new ways to promote “viewpoint diversity.” 

The antisemitism and anti-Israel task force report paints a sobering portrait of the campus climate for Jewish and Israeli students.

“No other group was constantly told that their history was a sham, that they or their co-religionists or co-ethnics were supremacists and oppressors, and that they had no right to the protections offered by anti-bias norms,” reads one section. “Many Jewish students told us they feel like objects of suspicion.”

The task force focuses only on the 2023-24 school year, a time period when Harvard became a central flashpoint of post-Oct. 7 campus controversies, and does not detail the school’s recent fights with Trump. Its authors, a mix of Harvard faculty, students and staff — as well as the director of Harvard Hillel for most of the period — urge the university to take a series of actions, going further than similar task force reports at other universities in advocating for wholesale change.

Those changes include more rigorous oversight of school centers, programs and courses on subjects such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to avoid “politicized instruction”; revamping admissions to prioritize students willing to do “bridge-building” and face “diverging viewpoints”; and expanding the school’s roster of classes on antisemitism, Judaism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

The report opens with an anecdote of a Jewish student who was told by peers that they could not present their grandparents’ Holocaust survival narrative at a student forum, because the family had emigrated to Israel. “They told me my family history was inherently one-sided because it does not acknowledge the displacements of Palestinian populations,” the student recalled. 

The task force goes on to depict the post-Oct. 7 climate at Harvard as one that frequently sought to lay the blame for Israel’s actions in Gaza at the feet of the school’s Jewish and, especially, Israeli students — both inside and outside of the classroom. In the joint task force surveys, Jewish Harvard students were twice as likely as non-Jewish, non-Muslim peers to feel “unwelcome and unsafe” (though Muslim students reported “greater negative experiences” on campus than Jewish students). 

And amid what the authors described as increased polarization and more aggressive campus protests than in generations past, they noted, “Harvard lacks relevant courses and programming to address the campus climate and discuss events in Israel/Palestine in a constructive, informed, and non-threatening way.”

One section of the report is devoted to the failures of staff and faculty at different Harvard schools to foster a welcoming environment for Jewish and Israeli students, including criticism of “politicized instruction that mainstreamed and normalized what many Jewish and Israeli students experience as antisemitism and anti-Israel bias.”

“We urge the university and its schools to take on the mantle of moral leadership in the fight against antisemitism and anti-Israel bias,” the report reads at one point. “We are deeply concerned that these forms of bigotry are becoming increasingly normalized in academia.”

The report also spends many pages setting up a broader historical context for the presence of Jews, antisemitism, and pro-Palestinian organizing on Harvard’s campus. The authors note the experiences of Harvard’s Jewish students following the end of its anti-Jewish quotas. They also document a shift over the last few decades from a brand of on-campus pro-Palestinian protest that sometimes sought to break bread with pro-Israel students, to one that focused on “shunning” them from public spaces and “appears to view bridge-building activities as a form of betrayal.”

A small number of anti-Zionist Jewish students also told the task force they felt discriminated against at Jewish organizations serving the campus, including Hillel and Chabad, due to their views on Israel. 

The parallel Islamophobia task force’s report, meanwhile, includes testimony from pro-Palestinian Jewish students. One who identifies as “a Jew with an Israeli parent” chastises Harvard for “bend[ing] over backwards to represent the views of the Zionist members of your community at the expense of those Jews in the diaspora who oppose the colonial project.”

The latter report also criticizes Harvard for not doing more to protect students from doxxing, including the presence of pro-Israel “doxxing trucks” that drove through campus projecting images of students the truck called “Harvard’s Leading Antisemites.” 

Survey respondents for the Islamophobia report also said they felt “apprehension” when Harvard adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, which includes some forms of Israel criticism, as part of a recent lawsuit settlement. Muslim and pro-Palestinian students feared the move would “suppress pro-Palestinian protest by conflating criticism of Israeli policies with antisemitism.”

Side by side, the two reports reflect an often yawning gulf in how their respective communities viewed both the current and historic campus climate. The Islamophobia report criticized Harvard for cancelling pro-Palestinian campus events, while the antisemitism report said that, historically, the school has prioritized pro-Palestinian voices and de-emphasized pro-Israel ones when programming events around the conflict.

Yet they also attempted to reach consensus, with a shared “Pluralism Subcommittee” issuing joint recommendations to address both problems, including one to establish an “institutional anchor for practices of pluralism on campus.”

As prospective members of Dartmouth’s class of 2029 visited their new campus for the first time Monday morning, they were confronted by a smattering of red paint across Dartmouth Hall’s facade.

The person who was allegedly responsible for the paint, which dripped from the building’s windows and doorways, said the act was in protest of the school’s investment in companies affiliated with Israel. The person spoke anonymously with the school’s student paper, The Dartmouth, about their motivations.

“Despite the known atrocities unfolding, Dartmouth insists on fueling the war machine through its cooperation with arms manufacturers complicit with the Gaza genocide,” the individual told The Dartmouth.

In February, the student coalition Dartmouth Divest for Palestine submitted a formal proposal to the school for it to divest from Israel. A college spokesperson said last month that investment decisions “must not curtail debate” but that an advisory committee would evaluate the request.

Divestment has long been a rallying cry from pro-Palestinian activists on campuses who seek to have their school’s finances severed from Israel. Dousing facades with red paint is likewise a frequent tactic of pro-Palestinian activists. Last year, the steps of Dartmouth’s president’s office was also splattered with red paint and the words “Free Palestine Divest” were written on the side of the building, according to Valley News.

The individual told the paper that they intentionally chose to act on the day that prospective students were visiting.

“As Dartmouth welcomes the Class of 2029 to campus, university students in Gaza must put their education on pause for the second consecutive year due to Israel’s continued assault on the Gaza Strip,” the source told The Dartmouth. “Let the blood that drips from Dartmouth Hall remind you of the price of silence.”

Yesterday, Dartmouth Hall was doused in red paint in an act of protest. https://t.co/5oEUoEQ4zS

— The Dartmouth (@thedartmouth) April 29, 2025

 

Dartmouth condemned the vandalism in a statement.

“Dartmouth prizes and defends the freedom of expression and dissent. Vandalism, however, is unacceptable and not protected by Dartmouth policies,” the statement read. “The Hanover Police Department and Dartmouth’s Department of Safety and Security are investigating the incident.”

Hillel at Dartmouth also denounced the vandalism in a statement, adding that it was “confident” the university will offer a “firm and principled” response.

“Acts of vandalism do not move us forward—there is no place for intimidation, violence, or destruction of property on our campus,” the statement read. “These acts of vandalism only serve to foster division among our students. Instead, we should all strive to build bridges by listening and finding common ground.”

By Monday afternoon, maintenance crews had largely cleared the paint off Dartmouth Hall, according to The Dartmouth.

The vandalism comes as schools around the country face mounting scrutiny from the Trump administration over their handling of pro-Palestinian protests on their campus. The administration has made billions of dollars in federal funding cuts to several Ivy League schools including Harvard and Cornell.

But Dartmouth, which received praise in the aftermath of Oct. 7, 2023, for how it handled tensions around Israel, has so far emerged mostly unscathed. It was not included in the Trump administration’s March list of 60 schools under investigation over allegations of antisemitism, even though it, like many other campuses, saw large-scale protests last spring.

There have been moments of tension. In May 2024, a Jewish professor at Dartmouth was thrown to the ground by police at a pro-Palestinian encampment. This year, two students at Dartmouth have had their student visas revoked, though one was subsequently reinstated.

Recently, Dartmouth students, alumni and faculty criticized the school for not condemning the administration’s campus crackdown. Last week, Dartmouth was the only Ivy League school that didn’t join a petition signed by 400 university leaders decrying the administration’s actions.

In response to the criticism, Dartmouth’s President Sian Leah Beilock emailed a statement to the school community defending her lack of opposition, writing, “reflection does not mean capitulation.” She added, “I believe we can do better by staying focused on what we are: educational institutions, not political organizations.”

A new abstract bronze sculpture that celebrates motherhood and caregiving was unveiled in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park last week.

Created by Jewish artist and activist Molly Gochman, the sculpture, part of her “Monuments to Motherhood” series, is 15 feet tall and resembles a loosely tied knot. It stands just opposite Grand Army Plaza, whose most notable feature is the Soldiers and Sailors Arch, which was built between 1889 and 1892 to honor Civil War Veterans.

Gochman’s sculpture, by contrast, is designed to subvert monuments that glorify violence and battlefield victories.

“What I’m trying to do is monumentalize the act of care,” Gochman told the New York Jewish Week in a recent phone interview.

The artist added that her sculpture is designed to “invite people to think of mothering in a more expansive way, like how we mother the earth, how we mother each other,” Gochman said. “I wasn’t thinking of one caregiver, specifically, I was thinking of this act of care.”

Gochman, 47, grew up in San Antonio, and is the daughter of antitrust and civil rights lawyer Arthur Gochman. The elder Gochman, who died in 2010 at age 79, was also the founder of an extremely successful sporting goods chain in Texas, Academy Sports.

Molly Gochman — whose work has been shown at the Ukrainian Museum in New York, and included in group exhibitions at Lincoln Center — moved to New York in 2012. Aside from a stint in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, she’s mostly lived in downtown Manhattan. In addition to creating art, Gochman serves as board chair for the Freedom Fund, a nonprofit working to end modern slavery, and is also on the Brooklyn Museum’s Council for Feminist Art and the New Museum’s Artemis Council.

Gochman’s latest work, which will be on view at Prospect Park through May 2026, is inspired by both her experience as a mother and her Jewish identity. “I wasn’t raised religious, but I was raised with Jewish values,” Gochman said.

“The fifth commandment is to honor thy mother and father, and the Torah says three times that children should honor and care for their parents,” Gochman added. “And I think care is fundamental to Judaism and the Jewish tradition, and caregiving is a Jewish value that we can all identify with.”

A married mother of two children, ages 9 and 5, Gochman recognizes how motherhood has transformed many aspects of her life, including her perception of joy and the passage of time.

“As a mother, also, a lot of what you do, you just do for others,” she said. “But remembering that I needed to do something for myself, and creating this work was something I did for myself and modeling also for my kids, that it’s okay to do something for yourself.”

“I was thinking of the emotions I have and the gestures that I perform when I’m caring for others, which are often like cooking and cleaning and holding,” Gochman said about her process creating the sculpture. “And so, the two loops that come together support one another. Neither can stand alone, and when I look at them, it reminds me of when my children’s limbs might flop over me when we’re cuddling at night.”

Gochman also cites her late father as inspiration: As a lawyer, Arthur Gochman was perhaps best known for his involvement in the 1973 civil rights case San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, which challenged the way Texas public schools were financed by local property taxes. Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the state’s funding system was not a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

“It would have changed how we fund public education in this country,” Gochman said, looking back at what could have been different. “And realizing that we fail a lot, but even the failures are things we learn from. Jane Fonda says something about being young and thinking life was a sprint, getting older, thinking it was a marathon —  and I’m now realizing it’s a relay race, just carrying batons and knowing that I’m not going to reach the finish line.”

To that end, another of Gochman’s “Monuments to Motherhood” sculptures is currently on view in Memphis, and Gochman also runs a podcast by the same name. “The podcast allows me to talk with different people about how they practice caregiving,” she said. “I talked to a man who takes care of his dad. I talked to two trans activists who are house mothers. So I’m trying to expand the definition of monuments and motherhood so that people can monumentalize an idea or an act.”

Gochman’s other recent public installation projects include a 650-foot trench filled with red sand at the Houston airport, representing the restriction on freedom of movement at the United States-Mexico border, and  a sculpture resembling a scar, representing Russian aggression in the war in Ukraine, that was on display in Asser Levy Park, Brighton Beach, a Brooklyn neighborhood with a large community from the former Soviet Union.

She has also mined her own family’s history through a multimedia project called “Memory Collage,” which includes family photos and a kiddush cup commemorating her great-grandparents’ 60th wedding anniversary.

Though Gochman designed “Monuments to Motherhood” with a few interpretations in mind, she also hopes that people who pass by it make their own meaning out of it.

While installing the piece in Brooklyn, Gochman said a runner yelled out to her that he instinctively knew it was “about connection.” She hopes it can also be used as a meeting point, and an interactive piece. As such, a public Mother’s Day celebration with family-friendly activities at the sculpture is scheduled for Sunday, May 11. (The sculpture is meant to be touched, and will become patinated over time from rain and oxygen, and as the oils from visitors’ hands interact with the bronze, turning it a greenish-blue.)

“I think of it as looking like a hug when you enter Prospect Park,” Gochman said. “And hopefully when people enter, they feel embraced and welcome and feel like not only is Prospect Park your park, but this is your sculpture.”

He’s known for a prankish public persona laced with several layers of irony. But Jewish comedian Nathan Fielder has always insisted he’s sincere about supporting Holocaust education.

On a 2015 episode of his reality show “Nathan For You,” Fielder launched Summit Ice, a nonprofit winter apparel brand that incorporated Holocaust education into its marketing. “It’s a cool jacket. But 6 million Jews did die, and that number is important,” Fielder said while promoting the brand on Conan O’Brien’s talk show that year. He has devoted all of its proceeds to Holocaust education and fighting bigotry. 

Fielder has kept the line active ever since with pop-up stores and new products, claiming it has raised millions for Holocaust education and recently referring to it as “my proudest achievement.” 

But on Sunday, he revealed that this mission had hit a stumbling block since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, when Paramount Plus pulled the 2015 episode from its streaming service. Fielder said the episode was first removed in Germany.

“In late 2023, a decision was made by Paramount Plus Germany to remove the episode in their region after they became uncomfortable with what they called ‘anything that touches on antisemitism in the aftermath of the Israel/Hamas attacks,’” Fielder said on a new episode of his latest show, HBO’s comedic docuseries “The Rehearsal.” Germany also has strict laws around speech incorporating Nazi and Holocaust imagery.

In emailed correspondence with Paramount executives, Fielder said, “the network confirmed in their response that it was taken down intentionally and gave me a one-word explanation as to why: ‘Sensitivities.’” On the show, he displayed snippets of what he said were the actual emails alongside staged reenactments of an actor playing Fielder receiving the news.

While “The Rehearsal” is intended as a comedy, Fielder’s allegations probe at a deeper layer of anxiety that many Jews have shared both before and since Oct. 7, 2023: the difficulties of educating the public about antisemitism and the Holocaust.

Fielder goes further. He also depicts the streaming service as Nazis, complete with a WWII-esque map of their decision spreading throughout the world, and a staged recreation of their regional “office” to look like Nazi headquarters, with armed guards wearing armbands depicting the streaming service’s blue logo.

“This act by Germany triggered the attention of other European Paramount branches, and they in turn pulled the episode too,” he says in the “Rehearsal” episode. “Before long, the ideology of Paramount Plus Germany had spread to the entire globe, eliminating all Jewish content that made them uncomfortable. This is real, by the way.”

A spokesperson for Paramount Plus confirmed to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the “Nathan For You” episode had been pulled from their service “following a standards review,” but would not elaborate. The episode, which originally aired on Comedy Central, is still available to stream on Max; a spokesperson for Warner Brothers Discovery, which owns HBO and Max, declined to comment further. 

Summit Ice also did not immediately return requests for comment. But the clothing line — which Fielder develops in the 2015 “Nathan For You” episode after consulting with a rabbi — announced a “New Era” rebrand of sorts in conjunction with the “Rehearsal” episode. The announcement, like most things Fielder-related, was laced with what are likely heavy doses of irony.

“In October 2023, our sales plummeted by nearly 90% and we couldn’t figure out why,” reads an updated “About Us” page on the brand’s website. “After extensive market research, only one answer made sense: consumers had suddenly become more savvy about the quality of softshell jackets. Therefore, we believe the best way to achieve our goal of raising awareness is by shifting our primary brand focus from genocide to craftsmanship.”

The site adds: “The practice of putting charity ahead of quality has come to an end.” It concludes by declaring the company will donate fewer of its proceeds to Holocaust awareness going forward, “at least in the short term,” in order to improve the quality of its merchandise. It concludes, “In this new era we Stand For Everything™. Now that’s something no one can deny.”

The Summit Ice episode of “Nathan For You” in 2015 includes a segment in which a misguided Fielder launches his brand with swastikas and other explicit Nazi imagery, before pivoting. It also discusses Fielder’s motivation for launching the brand: his discovery that the founder of an outerwear brand he had preferred previously had memorialized a Holocaust denier.

In his “The Rehearsal” follow-up, Fielder hints that material like this may have retroactively run afoul of Germany’s strict speech laws around depictions of Nazis, the Holocaust and antisemitism, which he suggests failed to carve out an exception for Jewish art. 

“I know you guys probably feel a lot of shame about what you did in the past, and now you’re trying to compensate by being the world leaders in fighting antisemitism,” Fielder tells an actor playing a Nazi-like Paramount Plus Germany executive. “But when it comes to art, I think you have to know your place and you have to let us Jews express ourselves. Because honestly the way you’re approaching this whole thing, people might get the wrong idea of what you actually stand for.”

For years the largest named beneficiary of Summit Ice had been the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, in Fielder’s hometown. The museum did not return JTA requests for comment. Its leadership has expressed its gratitude to the comedian, noting that, as a young student at the Jewish day school Vancouver Talmud Torah, he had been moved hearing a Holocaust survivor’s talk presented by the museum.

“His commitment is an example of the positive action one can take when faced with Holocaust denial,” the museum’s leaders wrote, also saying Fielder “embodies the lessons of Tikkun Olam, the concept of performing acts of kindness to perfect or repair the world.”

The previous season of “The Rehearsal” also dealt heavily with Judaism; in one episode, Fielder hires a Hebrew tutor for an actor playing his son. As a punchline, the tutor urges a visibly uncomfortable Fielder to use his “platform” to advocate for Israel.

This article was produced as part of JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives.

“Wait, you’re Jewish?” 

Every time I hear that question, it feels like a doorway opening to a conversation I’ve had a million times before, and each time I tell people the same thing. 

My dad is Korean, and my mom is Ashkenazi Jewish. I was raised in a Jewish household, where I celebrate every major Jewish holiday, had a bat mitzvah and spent six years learning Hebrew. Doing all of these things felt natural — what I should be doing as a Jew. Even though others might have their own questions for me based on how I look, I never questioned whether I should have a bat mitzvah or attend synagogue on the High Holy Days. 

My Jewish experience has been steeped in family traditions and a Jewish community. My family hosts Passover seders and Yom Kippur break-fasts, surrounded by Jewish friends and family members. My dad’s brother’s family joins us for Passover each year, creating a blend of two distinct cultures. While this tradition brings our families together, my dad and his brother are second generation and don’t speak Korean or celebrate Korean holidays. 

Based on how I look — my brown hair, brown almond eyes and tan skin — other people don’t see me as Jewish because it misaligns with how they think a Jewish person should look. The disconnect leads to some sort of cognitive dissonance, where their preconceived stereotypes about identity conflict with what they see. I know they are processing the information when they say, “Wait, you’re Jewish?” but to me it sounds like they are questioning the validity of my identity. 

My Judaism is strongly connected to family — especially my mom. But, because I look Korean, it often feels tucked away under the surface. My Judaism is a part of my identity but it doesn’t inform my everyday life. I think because people don’t immediately see me as Jewish, it’s taken a toll on the way I see myself in the Jewish community. 

On the other hand, being Korean is largely tied to my appearance. It’s the first thing people notice when they see me — which creates my own cognitive dissonance since I don’t really feel Korean beyond my appearance. I don’t celebrate any Korean holidays, I don’t speak Korean and I don’t have a strong connection to Korean traditions. My Korean experience feels more racial than cultural. 

It feels like some sort of imposter syndrome in my own body. I navigate a space where my appearance tells one narrative, while my heritage tells another. Sometimes I feel like I straddle two worlds yet I don’t fully belong to either of them. In a way, I feel like I’m in some sort of cultural limbo. 

However, my Korean and Jewish cultures are similar in that they are both heavily centered around family and food. My Korean grandmother — my Halmoni — connects me to my roots, like trying to learn Korean and having a love for Korean food. Similarly, my Jewish culture comes from what my mom and her family have taught me about our family history, and the Jewish traditions they have passed down. 

However, despite this, I’ve never felt out of place in my Jewish community or at synagogue until recently.

On Kol Nidre last year, I went to synagogue with my mom and felt a sense of distance and detachment I’d never felt before. I looked around the room and I felt a distinct sense of “I don’t belong here.” I wondered why I noticed a disconnect this past year, rather than when I was a child regularly attending Hebrew lessons or a coming-of-age adult celebrating my bat mitzvah.

It dawned on me that I didn’t see a lot of people who looked like me. This was the first year going to synagogue with just my mom. I usually go with her and my older sister, who is now in college, so I always had someone who shared my identity and experiences. My mom doesn’t look like me, so she was a mirror to a feeling I had never experienced.

I often wonder how others navigate their multicultural identities and the pull of their various heritages. Conversations with other Jewish teens help me explore my multicultural identity within the Jewish community

Miyari Vazquez-Wright is half Jewish, half Taíno, the indigenous people of the Caribbean. She too, struggles with finding her place in the Jewish community because of her Taíno identity. “Outside of my sister, [I’ve known] two other people who are both a person of color and Jewish, so it’s just been hard to find my places on both sides,” Vazquez-Wright, 15, said.

While she does not identify as religiously Jewish, her connection to Judaism is deeply rooted in her family ties and the Los Angeles community she embraces. Like me, she’s felt how other people’s perceptions of her widen the distance between herself and Judaism. 

This struggle with identity highlights the difficulties Jewish teens of color face in navigating our connection to our religion, especially when external perceptions can create barriers. 

Vasquez-Wright often feels like an outsider at the places she worships, where people can be negative towards her identity. But she finds empowerment in combating the negativity.

“No matter what you say, I am still going to be a Jewish person. There’s power in that too,” she said.

Finding pride in Judaism takes time for some teens. Growing up, Bobby Ellenberg was self-conscious about standing out as an adopted Black Jew with white parents. But now, at 17, he enjoys going to synagogue in Los Angeles.

“When I was younger, it did weigh on me quite a bit,” Ellenberg said. “It was pretty noticeable in the class photos going to shul and the grade photos.” 

He also faced adversity for not being “Black enough” because he didn’t grow up in a Black home. “I still have to deal with all the negative parts about being Black,” Ellenberg said. “I think that’s probably what it hurts the most.”

Once Ellenberg realized he was accepted, he recognized that the only person holding him back was himself. 

The story young Jews of color tell themselves and tell others is an important part of acceptance, says Tani Prell, the creative director for Be’chol Lashon, a nonprofit raising awareness around racial and ethnic diversity in the Jewish community.

Last year, the organization partnered with the online site jGirls+ Magazine to feature the personal stories of Jewish teens of color. “I think this group understands on a very personal level how representation of diverse Jewish experiences in writing can help foster a sense of community and belonging,” Prell said.

Maybe this is the reason I wanted to be a part of the JTA Teen Fellowship. Telling my story is an instrument for me to celebrate my story and expand my perspective. In a world where diverse voices often go unheard, storytelling becomes even more crucial. 

I don’t want to be part of a Judaism that doesn’t accept and allow me and Bobby and Miyari to be ourselves. I want to be part of a Judaism that does welcome us and allow us to come as we are. 

Since last Kol Nidre, in talking to Miyari and Bobby and researching this article, I realized it doesn’t matter how others perceive us. It’s about how we see ourselves. I can’t change what others think about me, but I can change how I view myself. 

Canada voted to keep Prime Minister Mark Carney in his seat Monday night after a stunning election that saw many voters swing to the Liberal Party amid fears over U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs and looming threats to make the country the “51st state.”

Carney defeated Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the Conservative Party, who had positioned himself as the tough-on-antisemitism candidate, promising — in a move borrowed from Trump’s playbook — to deport immigrants accused of antisemitic crimes.

Poilievre had appealed to Jewish voters by saying he would tamp down on a wave of antisemitic incidents and anti-Israel protests since the launch of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

“The Jewish community feels understandably under siege, as these hate marches and antisemitic outbursts have become an unfortunate part of Canadian life, and Liberals have encouraged these divisions,” Poilievre said on the campaign trail, according to Politico.

Carney, meanwhile, has vowed to crack down on antisemitism in Canada while offering greater criticism of the Israeli government and Israel’s war in Gaza.

The election was triggered after Justin Trudeau resigned as prime minister in January, amid a loss of confidence within his Liberal Party as well as harsh criticism from Jewish groups that lamented his response to the steep rise in antisemitism and his perceived failures to support Israel. Some Canadian Jews said they planned to vote for the Conservatives for the first time because of those issues.

But the election soon became a referendum on Trump, as the new U.S. president took aim at Canada, imposing steep tariffs and igniting a wave of national pride and resistance. Many voters saw Carney as uniquely poised to handle the country’s economic uncertainty, having led the Bank of Canada during the 2008 financial crisis.

“As I have been warning for months, America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country. But these are not idle threats. President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us,” Carney said in a victory speech Monday night. “That will never ever happen.”

Carney has promised to tackle rising antisemitism by increasing policing powers and the annual budget for the Canada Community Security Program, which will help provide security measures to communities and places of worship, according to B’nai Brith Canada.

His proposed policies would create safety zones around places of worship and criminalize intimidation outside of places of worship and other community spaces.

“In Montreal, in Toronto, across this country, [there are people] who fear going to their synagogue, fear going to their community center, fear taking their children [and] leaving their children in school, and this has to stop,” said Carney last week, according to Politico. “It’s totally unacceptable.”

An anti-Zionist demonstration targeting Crown Heights that had alarmed local Jews and drawn heightened police activity petered out on Monday night, as dozens of protesters meandered around Brooklyn without even reaching the intended neighborhood.

The protest was framed as a response to unrest that engulfed the area surrounding the Chabad Hasidic movement’s headquarters last Thursday, in which pro-Palestinian demonstrators protested a visiting far-right Israeli politician, Itamar Ben-Gvir.

In an incident that was caught on video and went viral, a crowd of Jewish counter-protesters surrounded and harassed a woman who was being escorted from the scene by a police officer. Photos also circulated showing a pro-Palestinian protester with a bloodied face.

On Monday, as news of that incident spread, a flier circulated online calling for a pro-Palestinian protest in Crown Heights billed as “Flood Crown Heights,” with the slogan “Zionism is not welcome here.” Another post called for attacks on Jews.

In anticipation, police bolstered their presence in the heavily Jewish neighborhood. Local Jewish organizations urged their constituents not to confront the protesters, though one militant right-wing pro-Israel group vowed to do just that.

That group, Betar, tweeted videos on Monday evening of their followers gathered together, and ready to oppose “pogroms.”

But they needn’t have. Police never allowed the pro-Palestinian protesters to get anywhere near Chabad headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway.

Beginning at 7 p.m., about 50 pro-Palestinian protesters gathered outside Barclays Center, surrounded by dozens of NYPD officers. The plan was to protest there before embarking on the 45-minute walk to Crown Heights.

The group stayed at Barclays for about an hour as latecomers joined the chants, which included the phrases “Zionism out of Brooklyn now” and “Resistance is justified.”

A man from Neturei Karta, an extremist anti-Zionist haredi Orthodox sect, held an Israeli flag that replaced the Star of David with a swastika. Messages on signs also included “Zionism out of Brooklyn,” as well as “Zionists are: • Racists • Terrorists • Rapists/pedos • Colonizers • Nazis.”

Around 8 p.m., as the sun was setting, the group began the march to Crown Heights, walking east along Atlantic Avenue to the sound of drums and ongoing chants. Some passersby cheered or honked their horns. A girl opened her car window to wave an Israeli flag, and a few boys in Orthodox garb rode by on bicycles scanning the crowd.

Noticing a line of police blocking their way, the group made an unexpected right turn, cutting through a McDonald’s parking lot to reach the next block. But once on that street, they faced yet another line of police blocking the way with their bicycles.

The next hour or so became a tactical game of cat and mouse. Dozens of officers walked alongside the protesters’ route as street after street was blocked by lineups of officers on bicycles who continuously maneuvered to cut off the path to Crown Heights. Police vans and cars patrolled the streets as well.

In the end, NYPD funneled the protesters to Grand Army Plaza, not far from their starting point, and along Flatbush Avenue, cutting through Prospect Park and ending up in Flatbush, south of Crown Heights, where they chanted for a few more minutes before dispersing.

Protesters cursed at the police, who had shown up in full force and outnumbered the group of demonstrators. “Y’all on the wrong people tonight,” said the protest’s leader, named Relly Rebel. Another man yelled, “They’re owned by the Zionist Jews!”

Erin, a 37-year-old protester who declined to share her last name for fear of being targeted, has lived in Crown Heights for about four years. She said she decided to protest after seeing the video of the crowd harassing the woman Thursday night.

“Now that I see that they are stalking and beating women who oppose a foreign government, I feel unsafe,” she said. “It’s pretty strange.”

The woman who was harassed told the Associated Press afterward that she was not involved in the protest.

Earlier on Monday, Rabbi Motti Seligson, a Chabad spokesman, had condemned “the crude language and violence of the small breakaway group of young people; such actions are entirely unacceptable and wholly antithetical to the Torah’s values.”

In that statement, he also condemned “violent provocateurs who called for the genocide of Jews in support of terrorists and terrorism — outside a synagogue, in a Jewish neighborhood, where some of the worst antisemitic violence in American history was perpetrated.”

That statement was a reference to the Crown Heights riots of 1991 that began after a car in Chabad leader Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson’s motorcade hit two Black children in the neighborhood, killing one; over days of violence that followed, rioters killed one Jewish man.

Rebel, the protest leader, also referenced the 1991 riots in a speech, repeating a disputed claim that “authorities” had “left the two Black kids on the ground. That’s why Black people went crazy.” (In fact, a local Hasidic emergency service did not have the equipment needed to treat the children. A hospital ambulance took nine minutes to arrive.)

But in the end, comparisons to the Crown Heights riots were misplaced. At around 11:30 p.m., Seligson tweeted that Crown Heights had a “festive feel.” He thanked the NYPD.

“It was heartening to see scores of people, some Jewish and some not, who came to Crown Heights to protect the residents. These people weren’t looking for a fight,” he tweeted. “Clearly this was not 1991.”

On the last day of his first visit to the United States while in office, Itamar Ben-Gvir made it to the halls of Congress.

The far-right Israeli national security minister announced that he met with four Republican members of Congress on Monday, capping a weeklong trip that otherwise largely stuck to right-wing Jewish groups and communities, and included multiple cancelations amid backlash.

The Capitol Hill meetings were notable because, several years ago, Ben-Gvir was considered too extreme to even partner with other right-wing politicians in Israel. Now he is a linchpin to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition. In November, nearly 90 Democratic Congress members unsuccessfully urged then-President Joe Biden to bar Ben-Gvir from entering the United States.

Ben-Gvir didn’t meet with any Democrats. More significantly, he also did not meet with any officials from the Trump administration, even though one of the goals of his trip was to push President Donald Trump’s stated vision for Gaza — including depopulating the enclave of Palestinians.

Ben-Gvir’s office distributed pictures of him with these members of the House of Representatives:

• Jim Jordan of Ohio, who as chair of the House Judiciary Committee is a leading Trump ally;
• Claudia Tenney of New York, who helms the new “Friends of Judea and Samaria Caucus.” The caucus is named for the term used by the Israeli government to describe the West Bank, and — like Ben-Gvir — supports perpetual Israeli control of that territory;
• Mike Lawler of New York, who represents a district with a large Jewish population and, as chair of the Middle East and North Africa Subcommittee, advises the State Department on issues related to Israel; and
• Brian Mast of Florida, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee and is the only member of Congress to have volunteered with the Israeli army. (Ben-Gvir was turned away for his compulsory army service because of his extremist ties.)

Chairman @RepBrianMast met with @itamarbengvir today to discuss America’s shared national security interests with Israel. pic.twitter.com/tMDDmRdn0b

— House Foreign Affairs Committee Majority (@HouseForeignGOP) April 28, 2025

Mast’s committee posted on social media that the two had discussed “America’s shared national security interests with Israel.” According to Ben-Gvir’s office, he spoke with Jordan and Tenney about “the Trump Plan for Gaza, the implementation of the death penalty in Israel for terrorists who have murdered citizens, and freedom of worship on the Temple Mount,” Judaism’s holiest site.

Ben-Gvir, an advocate for Jewish resettlement of Gaza, is one of the most vociferous advocates for Trump’s depopulation plan. He is likewise an outspoken advocate for Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount, which is also a Muslim holy site. Regulations at the site, a flashpoint of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, heavily restrict Jewish prayer, a situation Ben-Gvir has endeavored to change.

Ben-Gvir’s office also boasted that he had clashed with protesters in the halls of Congress. Both Code Pink and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, posted videos showing their activists calling Ben-Gvir a war criminal and shouting “Free Palestine.” At one point, a protester tells him that he killed their family in Gaza. The videos show Ben-Gvir facing the protesters and shouting at them while security personnel kept them apart.

“He completely lost it,” Code Pink tweeted, adding, “His violent, irritable reaction to peaceful protest shows exactly the kind of brutality he unleashes on Palestinians every day.”

Ben-Gvir’s office had a different take on the confrontation, issuing a description of the incident and Ben-Gvir’s response: “Despite the commotion, the Minister did not flinch and responded with characteristic strength: Terrorists, 9/11 supporters, Israel haters, saboteurs, baby killers. Israel will remain ours!”

Ben-Gvir is set to return to Israel on Tuesday, his office said.

Correction: This story has been corrected to show that the House Foreign Affairs Committee Majority social media account posted about Rep. Brian Mast’s meeting with Itamar Ben-Gvir.