JAFFA, Israel — It was after 2 a.m. by the time I finally fell asleep, after yet another siren sent us scrambling to the safe room in our Jaffa apartment, which has transitioned — at least for this iteration of war — into a kind of Japanese-style tatami bed, sprawling mattresses wall-to-wall. Three hours later, I woke up inexplicably and saw the door was open. One of the kids was missing.

Bleary-eyed, I went searching and found my middle son curled up asleep on my bed. I carried him back and pulled the heavy handle shut again. I’d barely drifted back to sleep when another siren sounded, followed by the scariest moment of my life.

It was the loudest boom I have ever heard. The safe room door blasted open. The house trembled. Outside, something smashed. For a split second, I wondered if my heart might literally stop.

The building’s WhatsApp group lit up in a frenzy. First checking who’s safe. Then what’s shattered.

My neighbors’ windows had blown in. Down in the courtyard, wooden shutters lay in heaps. Lights had popped out of their sockets, hanging limp like snapped tendons.

Our porch doors had come off their railings. Some of the bedroom windows were broken. But we were fine. Thank God.

My husband and I activated our emergency protocol with the boys — a cartoon on a tablet and an overly sweet yogurt for each. Then I went to report from the scene of the impact, not two dozen meters away. Somehow, my daughter was still in her tatami bed, sleeping through it all.

Maybe she’s used to it. There are often criminal incidents nearby, grenades, gunfire. In December, a Houthi missile that slipped through Israeli air defenses struck a playground a few hundred meters from our home.

But this morning’s impact was something else. Despite initial reports, it wasn’t a direct hit. The Iron Dome had intercepted the missile unusually low, which is what caused the damage. Later, we learned that Iran had fired a cluster bomb — one that breaks apart into many smaller projectiles — for the first time. A mini-missile appears to have fallen near us as well.

When I reached the main road, every kind of emergency service was there: ambulances, border police, municipal workers. Glass was everywhere. Shopfronts had caved in.

One local, Bilal, told me both his house and his store were hit. They’re half a mile apart. “Half of Jaffa sustained damage,” he said. That might have been an exaggeration, but it wasn’t entirely off.

I found a man leaning on a motorbike, tattooed from his knuckles to his neck, surveying the wreckage of three stores — fashion, perfume, and makeup — all blown open. He introduced himself as Rashad, the owner. Even his home in Bat Yam had rattled from the impact, he said. That city had just endured a deadly strike over the weekend.

The perfume shop was the only one with a metal grate. Its glass was still smashed. This was the second time its front had shattered — the first time was a drive-by shooting three months ago. A bullet meant for someone on a scooter missed and hit the store instead.

I asked Rashad what he planned to do about the other two shops, which had no metal grate and now stood completely exposed to the street. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll just leave it. Everyone’s having a hard time. Maybe I’ll let people take what they want,” he quipped.

Amid shards of glass, some people sat at a coffee shop, dazed, sipping coffee. A sudden siren-like noise made me jump up in panic. It turned out to be a woman watching a clip of the strike on her phone. She came over and hugged me.

The cafe owner said his wife was at home crying. “With Hamas rockets, I used to just continue with my day and walk around outside. But with Iran? I always go to the shelter. Those missiles are no joke.”

Tax Authority workers were going around taking down information. They couldn’t take mine, apparently. I rent, and only owners can file a claim about damages.

Before long, police, medics and journalists were pulling out, and the red police tape came down. The street returned to its usual chaos: motorcycles flying past, kids on electric scooters. A message popped up in my building’s WhatsApp group, a surveyor had arrived to assess damage.

As I walked home, the updates kept coming — many of them in that now-familiar category of wartime miracles: what could have been, but wasn’t. No one reported a single injury in Jaffa. A piece of missile had landed next to the senior citizens’ home around the corner — the same one that had been evacuated days earlier.

Then a video from Beersheba: Soroka Hospital had taken a direct hit at the same time as Jaffa. The missile struck a ward that had been vacated just a day earlier.

I ran into my upstairs neighbor walking his elderly dog. He’s a psychologist, so I took the opportunity to ask how much I should tell the kids about what had happened. He gave the usual therapist answer – use their language, leave space for questions – and then added, “Israeli kids are incredibly resilient. Just look at what Bamba did for them.”

Not that it mattered – by the time I got back to the building, the kids were buzzing, swapping stories about which apartment had it worst. We began another day.

As the entire world psychoanalyzing Donald Trump to figure out whether he will decide to join Israel’s attacks on Iran, the president is offering little clarity.

“I may do it,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday, amid reports that the Israelis believe he is preparing to enter the war. “I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do.”

But several key foreign policy decisions in his first term could signal which way he will go — if only they did not point in opposite directions.

The past decisions reflect Trump’s long-held view of himself as both the ultimate dealmaker and tough guy. Yes, Trump loves to get a deal done — and the bigger the better. He also believes unpredictability and the perception that he will go further than anyone in a fight are keys to a successful negotiation.

Trump came to office promising to do far more than his predecessors to stand up for America, but also to ensure better relations with longtime adversaries, most notably Russia, China and North Korea. He dismissed long-standing diplomatic concerns and protocols about when and how to negotiate with our enemies, often looking to go right to direct leader-to-(supreme)-leader talks, a strategy rooted in his deep faith in his singular ability to get a deal done — and one that would be much better than any of his predecessors’.

In pursuing direct talks with the likes of Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, Trump disregarded or dismissed inconvenient U.S. intelligence. He set the tone early, in a high-profile 2017 pre-Super Bowl interview with Fox shortly after his inauguration, pushing back on Bill O’Reilly’s befuddlement over Trump’s respect for Putin. “But he’s a killer,” O’Reilly said. Trump replied: “There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?”

Trump reveled in his pursuit of deals — and not just the ones draped in fanfare, such as the Abraham Accords. In order to get U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, he went so far as to give Taliban leaders the Camp David treatment.

On the flip side, he also displayed a willingness to ramp up confrontation.

Despite his complaints about Ukraine, Trump has boasted about providing Kyiv with offensive weapons that President Barack Obama had not approved. And he took a bold and previously off-limits step on Iran: the killing in January 2020 of Qassem Soleimani, the country’s most influential military commander. Soleimani was the leader of the Quds Force, the unconventional warfare arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Soleimani was seen as the most important figure in supporting and coordinating Iran’s network of terror proxies across the region and having a hand in repeated attacks against Israeli and U.S. targets spanning decades.

Previous U.S. leaders – and their Israeli counterparts – had opted against targeting Soleimani out of fear of what the fallout from such a move would bring. But, fed up with attacks on U.S. forces by Iran-backed militias in Iraq, Trump ordered a U.S. strike on a vehicle carrying Soleimani near the Baghdad airport.

Just as Netanyahu now insists Israel was spurred by new intelligence showing Iran was “marching very quickly” toward a nuclear weapon, the Trump administration immediately framed the decision to take out Soleimani as a response to an “imminent threat” involving attacks on U.S. targets. The “imminent” part of the claim has been questioned, but Trump has stood by it.

“They were not meeting to discuss child care, OK?” Trump would tell Axios’ Barak Ravid in 2021. “They had a lot of very bad intentions. And we knew that. So I felt very strongly that our country really had little choice.”

Whether Soleimani was in Iraq to plan immediate attacks or not, American officials blamed him for the deaths of at least 600 U.S. troops who had been deployed to the region since the Iraq War in 2003.

Israel reportedly provided key intelligence for the operation, including tracking the cell phone of the Iranian general. Rather than being seen as a high point in U.S.-Israeli coordination, however, the hit on Soleimani became a point of contention and bitterness — at least in Trump’s mind.

“I can’t talk about this story,” Trump told Ravid. “But I was very disappointed in Israel having to do with that event. … People will be hearing about that at the right time.”

Trump was still upset a few years later. In the days after Hamas’ surprise attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, he vented to an audience at Mar-a-Lago.

“Israel was going to do this with us, and it was being planned and working on it for months,” Trump reportedly said. “We had everything all set to go, and the night before it happened, I got a call that Israel will not be participating in this attack.”

Trump added: “I’ll never forget that Bibi Netanyahu let us down.”

Multiple media outlets have quoted unnamed U.S. officials as pushing back on Trump’s claim that Israel pulled out at the last second, saying it was completely inaccurate. “They were never on board with it,” a former senior White House official told NBC News. “They always thought it was a dangerous and destabilizing idea.”

Ravid offered up the complete opposite debunking in his reporting, citing a senior Israeli defense official who said that Israel had proposed playing a more active role, but the U.S. insisted on executing the strike.

Soleimani was particularly close to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “The loss of our dear General is bitter,” Khamenei said on what was then called Twitter. “The continuing fight and ultimate victory will be more bitter for the murderers and criminals.”

U.S. intelligence and law enforcement believe that in response to Soleimani’s killing, Iran ordered the assasination of Trump and other officials, including then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton. The Iranian plot is not believed to be connected to the high-profile attempts in Pennsylvania and Florida to assassinate Trump during the 2024 campaign.

The Biden administration responded by upping protection for Trump and the other officials. Shortly after returning to office, Trump revoked Pompeo’s and Bolton’s security details, despite the threats from Iran, leading to speculation that the move was in part related to his gripes with his former aides.

“When you have protection, you can’t have it for the rest of your life,” Trump told the New York Times, adding, “I mean, there’s risks to everything.”

Trump’s political friends and foes paint him as someone who can hold a grudge. But with Iran and the ayatollah, he has repeatedly seemed to let assassination attempts be bygones. During the 2020 and 2024 campaigns, and the first few months of his second term this year, Trump has pushed for a new and improved deal as the preferred approach to curtailing Iran’s nuclear deal, going so far as to send a personal letter to Khameini in March.

Back in March, the Times reported this week, Trump would “regale” visitors to the Oval Office and guests on Air Force One about his “beautiful letter” to the ayatollah. According to the Times: “One visitor treated to a live rendition recalled the letter’s basic message as: I don’t want war. I don’t want to blow you off the map. I want a deal.”

That was then. On Tuesday, talking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump sounded as if he had shifted into tough-guy mode.

“They should have done the deal. I told them, ‘Do the deal.’ So I’m not too much in a mood to negotiate.”

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum appeared to condemn a statement made by NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani in which he defended the phrase “Globalize the intifada,” saying the word “intifada” had been used in translations by the museum.

Mamdani, meanwhile, responded to the accusations of antisemitism he has received since the statement in a tearful address Wednesday, telling reporters “it pains me to be called an antisemite.”

While speaking on “The Bulwark” Tuesday, Mamdani defended the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which has been used by pro-Palestinian protesters and seen by many as a call for violence against Jews, telling the hosts that the phrase was often misunderstood.

“I think what’s difficult also is that the very word has been used by the Holocaust Museum when translating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising into Arabic, because it’s a word that means struggle,” said Mamdani, who has a long record of pro-Palestinian activism. “And as a Muslim man who grew up post-9/11, I’m all too familiar in the way in which Arabic words can be twisted, can be distorted, can be used to justify any kind of meaning.”

In a post on X Wednesday, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum decried the comparison of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a major Jewish uprising against the Nazis in 1943, with the phrase, though it did not explicitly mention Mamdani.

“Exploiting the Museum and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to sanitize ‘globalize the intifada’ is outrageous and especially offensive to survivors,” the post read. “Since 1987 Jews have been attacked and murdered under its banner. All leaders must condemn its use and the abuse of history.”

Mamdani’s statements appeared to reference an Arabic translation of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising that was used on the museum’s website up until May 2024, according to archived web pages found on the WayBack Machine.

Until that time, the Arabic translation on the website’s page for the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising translated “uprising” to “انتفاضة,” the Arabic word for intifada. It was then changed to “مقاومة,” or “muqawama,” the Arabic word for “resistance.”

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the translation change.

Mamdani addressed the accusations of antisemitism that he has faced following his statements in an emotional press conference Wednesday morning in Harlem where he was repeatedly asked to respond to the accusations by reporters.

“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.

Mamdani then went on to tell reporters about threats to his life he has faced as the first Muslim mayoral candidate, becoming visibly emotional and pausing his statements to compose himself before continuing.

“I get messages that say the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim. I get threats on my life,” said Mamdani, who then paused to compose himself as his voice broke. “On the people that I love, and I try not to talk about it, because the function of racism, as Toni Morrison said, is distraction.”

“The thing that’s made me proudest in this campaign is that the strength of our movement is built on our ability to have built something across Jewish and Muslim workers, across New Yorkers of all faiths and all backgrounds and all boroughs,” he said. “And antisemitism is such a real issue in the city, and it has been hard to see it weaponized by candidates who do not seem to have any sincere interest in tackling but rather in using it as a pretext to make political points.”

Some New York Jewish leaders have decried Mamdani’s statements, calling on him to apologize for equating the word “intifada” with the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

The UJA-Federation of New York said in a post on Instagram that “any attempt to sanitize the phrase is outrageous.”

“Let’s be clear: ‘Globalize the intifada’ is not a call for justice. It is a call for antisemitic violence. Here in New York, it is linked to some of the most dangerous attacks and threats against Jewish students,” the post read.

“Any attempt to sanitize the phrase is outrageous and especially offensive to Holocaust survivors who understand better than most what happens when we ignore the weaponization of rhetoric to validate violence. All leaders, at a moment of deepening danger for the Jewish community, must condemn both this language and the abuse of history it represents,” the post continued.

Rabbi Marc Schneier, the senior rabbi of The Hampton Synagogue, also called on Mamdani to apologize to New York City’s Jewish community for his defense of the phrase.

“Zohran Mamdani must immediately apologize to New York City’s Jewish community for his offensive claim, in which he equates ‘intifada’ with the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising,” said Schneier in a statement.

“His language is a direct insult to survivors and the hundreds of thousands of Jewish New Yorkers who are the relatives of loved ones lost in the Shoah. His moral laryngitis in the face of Iranian attacks on Israeli civilians further exposes his indifference to Jewish suffering and disqualifies him from any leadership role in this city,” the statement continued.

In an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe Wednesday morning, Elisha Wiesel, the chairman of the Elie Wiesel Foundation and son of Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, also decried Mamdani’s defense of the phrase.

“American Jews are already in danger. We have a mayoral candidate on the ballot who refuses to condemn the phrase, you know, globalize the Intifada, which is code switching for kill the Jews. So you have Zohran Mamdani running for office. The war is here. It’s not something fictional and far away,” said Wiesel.

Wiesel also called on New Yorkers to block Mamdani from being elected in a post on X.

Mamdani is currently polling second in an 11-way contest for the Democratic mayoral primary on Tuesday. The frontrunner, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, also decried his comments, saying in a post on X Wednesday that Mamdani’s statement is “not only wrong — it is dangerous.”

“At a time when we are seeing antisemitism on the rise and in fact witnessing once again violence against Jews resulting in their deaths in Washington DC or their burning in Denver – we know all too well that words matter. They fuel hate. They fuel murder,” the post read.

“As the US Holocaust Museum so aptly said, all leaders or those running for office must condemn the use of this battle cry. There are no two sides here,” the post continued. “There is nothing complicated about what this means. I call on all candidates running for mayor to join together to denounce Mr. Mamdani’s comments because hate has no place in New York.”

Naftuli Moster spent a decade as an activist accusing haredi Orthodox yeshivas of denying students a basic education and the tools needed to become independent adults. He later launched a muckraking news site targeting misconduct by Orthodox communal leaders.

Now, he has made a stunning disavowal of both his activist past and recent journalistic endeavors.

He considers the confrontational tactics he once embraced misguided and says he has developed a deep appreciation for the Orthodox way of life, which he had previously rejected. His reckoning, he says, was fueled by a growing distrust of progressive politics and the motivations of his former allies, as well as concern that his outspokenness harmed his many relatives who remain in the community.

Moster revealed his personal transformation in an interview released Sunday with YouTuber Frieda Vizel, a former member of the Satmar Hasidic community known for her often critical commentary on Hasidic life and culture.

“I have some regrets about how I went about my advocacy and, frankly, I probably would have even been more successful if I had done things differently,” Moster told Vizel.

He said he asked Vizel to interview him on her popular YouTube show because he wanted the public to stop associating him with the issue of secular education standards at yeshivas. It was an issue he helped bring to the forefront of public debate as the founder and face of the advocacy group Yaffed, which stands for Young Advocates for Fair Education. He left the group in 2022.

“When anything, anytime, happens in the community, in the haredi community, especially if it involves education … I’m still that, kind of, boogeyman and I felt like it’s important for people to know that I’ve moved on,” Moster said.

Moster has long been a target of intense scorn in the Orthodox world. A publication once called him a “rabid self-hating Jew” and Moster reported said he’s been called a “Nazi” for his activism. 

Moster’s announcement comes weeks after a major setback for the movement he once led. Just as the New York State Education Department was beginning to ramp up enforcement of a law requiring that yeshivas, like all private schools, teach subjects like English and math to a minimum standard, the effort was gutted by the governor and legislature. The move to weaken oversight of religious schools was seen as a victory for Orthodox leaders wary of state interference.

It’s too soon to tell how Moster’s self-reinvention will affect the ongoing debate over secular education standards for religious schools, but his recent interview is already stirring conversation within the Orthodox world.

Writing in the haredi publication VIN, Rabbi Yair Hoffman described Moster as someone who had caused significant damage to Orthodox Jewry by shaping negative perceptions of the community among policymakers and the broader public. Still, Hoffman praised Moster for expressing regret and called his return to Jewish observance a welcome, if incomplete, development.

“The interview reveals remarkable personal growth and genuine regret,” Hoffman wrote. “Moster’s journey back toward his people, imperfect as it may be in its theological foundations, represents genuine progress that deserves recognition.”

Asked what Moster’s announcement meant for the cause of secular education at yeshivas, Yaffed executive director Adina Mermelstein Konikoff released a statement. 

“We remain laser-focused on our mission to ensure that every child in New York State receives a sound basic education, regardless of the type of school they attend,” Konikoff said. “We’re proud to have built a movement with broad support across the political spectrum, including volunteers and advocates from within New York’s Hasidic communities.”

Phylisa Wisdom, the executive director of the New York Jewish Agenda, a liberal advocacy group, has worked with both Konikoff and Moster. She said she considers Moster a “hero” but added that the cause he once championed is now larger than him.

“Moster started something really important,” Wisdom said in an interview. “I’m someone who was brought along because of him and because of his passion for this topic, and how articulately and ably he communicated the issue to the world. And the issue persists, whether it’s something that’s important to him to do advocacy around or not.”

Wisdom said her allies among state policymakers care about the education of Orthodox youth and won’t be deterred because Moster has distanced himself from the issue.

“I don’t think policymakers are thinking about how Naftali Moster feels about this issue anymore,” she said.

In an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in May, Konikoff acknowledged that her group is at a crossroads after the state’s decision to retreat from enforcing secular education standards, which she called “shocking and devastating.”

“This is a bump in the road and we’re exploring all of our options,” she said. “The regulations have been gutted, but they’re not totally gone, so we’re looking at the language very carefully … We’re exploring what that looks like, right, and ways that we can be most impactful.”

Moster did not immediately respond to an interview request from JTA. 

In the YouTube interview, Moster said he still believes in improving secular education at yeshivas, but not in the tactics of mounting a public pressure campaign. He said his desire to confront yeshiva leaders stemmed from the anger he once felt as a yeshiva graduate struggling to adjust to adulthood.

“I had a broken English, I had no high school diploma, I had no understanding even of how college operates, no foundational knowledge that sort of would help me through the college, even the application process, let alone actual college. So, yeah, I was pretty angry at the time and I felt like I had nothing to lose because I already felt sort of disowned or shunned by the community anyway,” Moster said.

Now, however, he says he has sympathy for the Orthodox leaders he once antagonized, recognizing their desire to preserve the status quo.

“Something that I wasn’t able to sort of acknowledge and admit at the time — that preservation of the community has a lot of value,” he said.

He also came to worry that the scorn he attracted could tarnish his family name and jeopardize the marriage and business prospects of his 16 siblings and many nieces and nephews.

“I felt like it was hurting my family,” he said.

Moster recalled his reaction to certain critics of his campaign — and how he came around to their point of view.

“They’d say, ‘you know, you’re right — there has to be change but it has to come from within and not only that, it’s actually already happening and I’m afraid you’re going to undermine it,’” Moster said. “And at the time I was… dismissing it, [saying] it isn’t really happening or ‘it’s not coming fast enough.’ But the truth is, I think it was. In fact, as both you and I know, the Hasidic community and the haredi community more broadly has undergone significant change in the last decade plus.”

According to Moster, he grew uncomfortable with some of his bedfellows as Yaffed sought allies in the progressive movement. He became particularly dismayed by the focus on trans identity among these left-wing allies.

“There was this assumption that if I am out there supporting secular education for Hasidic kids, I must also be on the bandwagon,” he said. “I must also be on board with encouraging trans content and such in the schools.”

Moster’s process of self-reflection accelerated as his own children were reaching school age and he and his wife were forced to confront decisions about their education. They ultimately enrolled their son in a Modern Orthodox school and relocated to be closer to it, embracing the community’s religious lifestyle, he said. It marked a dramatic turn for Moster, who had grown up Hasidic but had become almost entirely secular.

His attitude toward the Hasidic world has also changed. The benefits of Hasidic life are more readily apparent to him now, he said.

“When I walk in the streets of Boro Park … I see so much good,” he said, describing a recent visit. “You see these kids, it’s sort of in the evening… they’re walking around holding books, and they’re peering into storefront windows of bookstores. It’s like, this is beautiful. This is what you want.”

He said he had never aimed to undermine the positive aspects of Hasidic life, and that he belatedly realized some of his former allies did.

“There were plenty of people in my orbit who I can say probably were totally OK with the community and the yeshivas being destroyed,” he said. “I don’t want to be affiliated with people who are seeking to destroy the systems that are working really well.”

After leaving Yaffed, Moster founded Shtetl, an online publication dedicated to accountability reporting in the Orthodox world. The outlet was based on the idea that independent journalism should expose and reform systemic problems being swept under the rug by community leaders. It reported on allegations of sexual misconduct and corruption until publication all but ceased in recent months.

Now, Moster has abandoned his original vision, arguing that Shtetl’s journalism threatened to do more harm than good by undermining trust in otherwise valuable institutions.

“I was thinking maybe Shtetl could become a hub for content creators. I’m OK with if Shtetl, you know, shuts down. I don’t have to do that. It would be great if I can keep it going and if I can do something productive and helpful. But if not, that’s okay,” he said.

Ana Levy-Lyons was in her 20s when she found out she was Jewish. During her childhood in Tenafly, New Jersey, her family never spoke about what her mother would later call her “Jewish heritage.” Classic “nones” (what Pew calls the “religiously unaffiliated”), the family observed no religious rituals other than an Americanized Christmas and Easter.

Nevertheless, or maybe inevitably, Levy-Lyons was drawn to matters of the spirit. After a brief career in tech and the music business, she enrolled at the University of Chicago Divinity School, eventually eschewing its dryly academic approach to religion in order to train as a Unitarian Universalist minister. She served for 18 years in “UU” pulpits, including the First Unitarian Universalist Congregational Society in Brooklyn. Now 52 and no longer working as a minister, she is enrolled in the Jewish Renewal movement’s ALEPH Ordination Program to become a rabbi.

Levy-Lyons might have told a “coming home” story, but her new book takes a different direction. “The Secret Despair of the Secular Left” is less a celebration of Judaism (although there is that) than a searing critique of modern secularism. 

As a church without a creed —UU’s pulpits and pews are open to believers and nonbelievers of any stripe — Unitarian Universalism came to represent to Levy-Lyons a “self-assured nothingness” that she sees among “nones” of all backgrounds. Without religious and traditional structures, she asserts, community bonds erode, people become detached from the natural world, and their souls become alienated from their bodies.

“I have come to believe that this is not just my story but the defining story of our time,” she writes. “It’s the story of disembodiment, disconnection, and dislocations. It cuts across class and race.”

She offers religious tradition, especially Jewish traditions, as an antidote to a pervasive sense of grief and longing for deeper connection and meaning. She writes from the left but also against the left, frequently challenging liberal orthodoxies when it comes to feminism, abortion and gender identity. 

In an FAQ feature on her Substack, she writes that the book is neither progressive nor conservative — or rather, both progressive and conservative. “I’m hoping that this book can help elevate our discourse beyond today’s political polarization and engage our deeper cultural and spiritual struggles,” she writes. “From my perspective, despite how much the two ‘sides’ hate each other right now, in terms of these struggles we are more similar than different.”

Levy-Lyons, whose previous book was “No Other Gods: The Politics of the Ten Commandments,” recently taught a course on Jewish environmental ethics for My Jewish Learning, JTA’s partner site. She lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with her husband and their 14-year-old twins. We spoke Tuesday about what she thinks is ailing the secular left, the alternative that Jewish tradition offers and why at least one reader had trouble squaring her liberal bona fides and some of her heterodox views. 

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.  

Your book is about a break with UU and what you felt able to do and not do as a minister, and by contrast what drew you to reclaim your Judaism. And a big part of that difference is a denomination that doesn’t impart any obligations or “shoulds” on its members, compared to what Judaism knows as mitzvot, which are commandments or obligations. Did I get that right?  

Yes, that’s part of it. My first book is about the 10 Commandments, and it’s very much about the liberating power of mitzvot. In the secular-left world, obligations and rules and commandments are seen as oppressive and restricting, and they are in certain ways, but I feel that they actually liberate us from what otherwise is subtly guiding our lives, which is a consumerist culture and the hidden values of secularism, where freedom itself becomes the ultimate good.

You quote your supervisor at a UU congregation in the Midwest: “The most important thing,” he said, referring to your congregants, “is to never make them feel guilty.” Was that the UU ethos?

Yes, freedom and self-determination are much more important than any obligations we might have to somebody else. This is a story I didn’t tell in the book, but I remember when I was in search for what ended up being my Brooklyn pulpit I was interviewing at a congregation, I think it was in Rhode Island. They asked me to put together a workshop or a little class for the search committee. And I asked them to imagine that if they were really, really religious Unitarians, what would that look like? What would they eat and not eat? What would they allow their children to do and not do? How would they dress? How would they spend their time? 

They just looked at me like I was from outer space. “There’s nothing that we wouldn’t eat, because we’d be good people, we would eat in ways that are healthy, and do things that are aligned with our values.”

I didn’t get that job.

Let’s talk about the title of your book, “The Secret Despair of the Secular Left.” Define that despair, and what is secret about it.

The despair comes from the kind of mismatch between all of the crises that we’re having in our world today — war and ecological devastation, everything that is happening now — and the despair that comes about when you realize that your spiritual, religious and communal resources are just not up to the task of giving meaning and strength when you need it, nor providing a structure and a sense of connection to the past and the future.

In the beginning of the book, I talk about it in terms of the economic term “unrealized loss.” We invested all of our energy and freedoms into these fruits of modernity and we find that it’s actually kind of worthless. We’ve liberalized ourselves out of any possible sort of meaning or foundation that we could have had.

Can you give me a concrete example of the kind of investment the secular left has made that hasn’t paid off? 

There’s two very easy ones. One is our use of technology and screens. We have this great new technology, and it seems like it allows us to connect meaningfully with people on the other side of the world, and as a result we don’t need to stay rooted in local communities anymore, we can move anywhere we want to for work. So this is freedom, right? You don’t have to remain chained to your local community or your family.

But then we are lonely and depressed in direct proportion to how much we use our phones and use this technology. We’re alienated from one another and don’t have real communities. I think Judaism in particular puts a real value on physical community and roots. There’s the idea of a minyan [the  10-person, traditionally in-person prayer quorum]. There’s a real emphasis on the kind of connectedness that has been broken in the modern world.

The other example is Shabbat. This is an ancient spiritual technology that people are now free from, in the Christian world, too, where blue laws are a thing of the past. Secularism freed us from the oppressive rule of having to not work on one particular day of the week. And as a result of that, we all work all the time, and we’re completely exhausted and overwhelmed. It’s difficult to choose to not work one day of the week when everybody else is working. 

And it’s a secret despair because people, especially on the left, don’t want to admit that it’s the very things that they were so proud of, that felt so liberatory, that felt so empowering, that are actually draining meaning from life and causing alienation.

What does Judaism offer as an alternative to this despair? 

Judaism offers a multi-generational story of people’s experiences of the divine and how the divine has acted in our lives, with the Torah as the basis for a huge kind of discourse that spans all these generations. It offers us a sense that we are part of something much larger, that we’re not reinventing the wheel. We actually have something to build on, and something not only that we had to build on, but that we are accountable to.

It’s almost like scientific advances — you wouldn’t as a scientist just throw out everything that every scientist has ever done in the past, and then just kind of start again. It doesn’t mean that you can’t revisit some things that you think scientists in the past got wrong. Judaism gives you not only a starting point, but this huge resource that you can draw on: people who for thousands of years have been struggling with things that are in many ways the same things that we’re still struggling with today. 

So along with that comes a sense of obligation to the future, and the sense that we’re a part of this tradition, we are making our own contribution to it, and then passing it on to future generations.

To talk about the secret despair of the secular left implies in part that the religious right has gotten it right. I know you don’t believe the religious right has all the answers — at one point you write that you are seeking a middle ground between what you call “a harsh double down traditionalism or a complete abandonment of religious life.” But is there a risk that you are giving too much credit to traditionalism, which comes with a lot of baggage, too, and which many people fled because many religions were oppressive or patriarchal or repressive?

I admit that I might very well be romanticizing the right, because I come from the opposite danger in my childhood, my upbringing and then in my career as a Unitarian minister. Intellectually I know why people have fled the religious right, and all those very real oppressive and patriarchal [tendencies]. But the reason I talk about the secular left in this book, it’s not because I think that the religious right has it correct, but just because the secular left is what I know. I can’t meaningfully critique the religious right from the inside. 

I’d like to discuss that critique. You write, focusing on the left, that “today it is almost unthinkable to ask people to give up something for the common good.” But the left is more likely to vote for Democrats, and blue states are much more highly taxed than red states on average, and the left is more likely to demand action on climate change, and urge regulation of corporations and the excesses of late capitalism, and follow pandemic guidelines on masks and closures.  Isn’t the left more willing to sacrifice in the sense you write about? 

The left and right maybe are willing to sacrifice in different ways. I don’t think that there’s any meaningful difference in how people on the left and the right live in terms of climate change and ecological impacts. I mean, realistically, someone on the left is going to be just as angry if you tell them to give up their hamburger, or not fly in an airplane. They’re not going to do that. I think that people on the right are much more neighbor- and community-oriented. They give more to charity than people on the left, too. So people on the left will vote for higher taxes. But people on the right would say, “Well, I’m going to take that money and give it to charity.”

The left definitely wants the government to, like, make the bad guys stop doing what they’re doing, but I think that people on the left are less willing to look at how we are participating in that same system, and we’re actually perpetuating that same system by buying the things we’re buying or doing the things we’re doing, or promoting personal autonomy as the highest ideal.

So let’s talk about that. The parts of the book that I found most challenging are when you write about abortion, childcare, gender identity and even baby formula as examples of people seeking “independence of the self from the body.” For example, you have some pointed critiques of the pro-choice movement, writing, “The celebration of abortion is so vehement in the progressive world that it sometimes feels like pregnancy itself is suspect, whether wanted or not.” Let me ask, are you pro-choice? 

I’m definitely pro-choice in that I believe that abortion should be legal. But I think that abortion has become part of the way that our culture emphasizes the freedom of individuals over our communal obligations. So I talk about in the book how eager corporations are to pay for people to get abortions, or pay for you to drive across state lines to get an abortion, or pay for people to freeze their eggs. Again, I think people should be able to get abortions, but the fact that corporations are so eager to support that, and are kind of reluctant to give people family leave and support people in their pregnancy and child-rearing — to me, that means that there’s something more going on. The human ideal in this culture is one who is unencumbered by family, certainly by the dependency of children, or pregnancy. Creating this new life is not what this capitalist culture holds up as the ideal. The ideal is the individual, freely choosing. So it’s not that people shouldn’t be able to have abortions, but the celebration of it as a kind of empowering, choice-oriented thing is a symptom of this culture.

In a similar vein, you write, disapprovingly, that, “American culture and finances dictate that our biological reproductive lives should only interfere minimally in our economically productive lives — or our self-actualization, for that matter. So our babies are often fed formula, sleep trained by any means necessary, and sent to paid care-givers at the earliest possible opportunity.” Feminists, led probably mostly by Jewish women, have fought for decades for a world in which biology is not destiny in the sense that it shouldn’t define women’s roles in the world. But are you suggesting that in some ways, they have to surrender that? That women ideally should eschew childcare and careers and be home with their children? 

We’ve built a society where women can’t do that, even if they want to. It’s kind of like Shabbat: In the name of not having to keep Shabbat, you’ve created a situation where it’s really hard to keep Shabbat. So if a woman in our culture wants to have lots of children and has the time and ability to stay home with them when they’re young, that’s really hard to do unless you’re rich. Otherwise you have to work and then pay most of what you make at work to daycare, even though that’s not what anybody wants. So we haven’t created a society that supports that as a real option for people, and I think there’s a lot of grief that comes out of that.

I’d also like to ask about transgender and gender fluidity. There’s a section of your book in which you ask, “What does it mean for a society as a whole if more and more people are removing their breasts”? And you suggest that the decisions to do so, which would presumably include transgender men, “point to a deep-seated spiritual grief and alienation.” Can you unpack that for me?

For some people, and I’ve known these people, it feels absolutely essential to change their body to match their internal sense of their gender. I would never criticize an individual’s decision to have an abortion or change their body to conform to their gender identity. I think these procedures should be legal and accessible. I also think that the prevalence and even celebration of these things in our culture are some (of many) indicators of an ethic or theology in which the individual self is a free-floating entity, separate from our bodies, our communities and the earth. This alienation as a whole is responsible for a lot of collective grief and, I believe, for our inability to live in sustainable relationship with our ecosystems. Abortion and gender surgeries are not the cause (or even a cause) of this alienation — if I were to point a finger at any overarching cause, it would be our immersion in screen-based, web-based technologies.

It’s not my role to agree or disagree with your book, but I did wonder as a journalist if you were citing extreme positions on the secular left and attributing them to the liberal mainstream. For example, you quote one young man who complains that “his pro-choice friends see adoption as a harmful phenomenon because it can serve as an enabling agent” for the pro-life movement. Honestly, I have never heard a pro-choice friend denigrate adoption. I guess I am defending the journalistic notion that you shouldn’t compare the worst or most extreme tendencies of one group to the best tendencies of another group. 

I don’t know if the left, in general, disparages adoption. This was this one particular person. But I do feel like when people are talking about abortion and pro-choice politics, people are a little bit wary of the topic of adoption, because it is used by pro-lifers to say, well, you don’t have to have an abortion.

But I do think it’s useful to look at the extremes, in order to see the vector of where a trend or idea might end up. My experience with Unitarian Universalism in general was that, while most of the left in this country is not as left as UU, this is what happens if you completely give up all traditions, all sense of accountability to the past. So I know that’s not the norm. Most people have never even heard of Unitarian Universalism. But when you look at the extreme of something, it kind of helps you see the direction we may be headed in. 

As I’m reading your book, I’m saying, “Wow, she’s writing about that middle ground between modernity and tradition, obligation and autonomy. That’s Conservative Judaism, with a large C.” And yet you are studying toward the rabbinate at ALEPH, which is part of the Renewal movement, which is a very liberal and innovative movement and which I don’t associate with the kind of rigorous religious obligations and “shoulds” that you write about. Tell me a little bit about that decision, or if I am wrong in terms of the kind of rabbis it’s creating.

You’re exactly right about the kind of rabbis that ALEPH is creating. They are all about expanding the traditions and reinterpreting halacha [Jewish law] and all of that. But there are a number of rabbis who are teachers there who I would say are more traditionalist, and Zalman Schachter-Shalomi [the late founder of ALEPH] himself was coming out of Orthodoxy and was very carefully opening up a tradition that he was definitely not abandoning. The reason why I ended up at ALEPH was because I was working full time as a minister, and I was writing books and I was raising a family, and so I had to study part time. There was no way I could go full time to [Conservative Judaism’s Jewish Theological Seminary], and [ALEPH] would allow me to study part time. And in some ways it’s been a good fit for me because the mystical orientation of Jewish Renewal is something that really resonates with me. 

What do you intend to do with your rabbinical degree? Are you interested in another pulpit?

I’m so done with the pulpit! [laughs] I mean, I’m glad that I had that experience, but it’s so hard.

I’m probably just going to continue doing what I’m doing now. I’m now trying to recreate a career for myself doing freelance versions of different components of clergy work. Writing, guest-preaching, one-on-one spiritual work.

I’m also thinking about a wider program that’s sort of the inverse of Footsteps [an organization that helps people who have left haredi Orthodox Judaism find their footing in the secular world]. What would it be like to help people escape from the oppressiveness of secular modernity, and find the freedom of the religious and communal life? 

Lawmakers from both parties are pushing to block President Donald Trump from bringing the United States into Israel’s ongoing conflict with Iran.

A Senate bill and a resolution introduced in both the House and Senate landed this week as Trump has signaled to officials and in public comments that he may be leaning towards intervening against Iran in the campaign launched by Israel last week.

The bill and resolutions aimed at limiting the United States’ involvement come from a bipartisan bloc of lawmakers seeking to constrain Trump’s power and from Jewish Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Independent from Vermont.

The resolution introduced in both the House and Senate invokes a 1973 federal law barring the president from entering an armed conflict without Congress’ approval.

In the House, Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie and California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna jointly introduced the resolution, which would prohibit “United States Armed Forces from unauthorized hostilities in the Islamic Republic of Iran.” They used a form of legislation that could force a full House vote.

“This is not our war,” Massie, who often stands alone among his Republican colleagues and has drawn opposition from Republican Jews, in a post on X Monday. “But if it were, Congress must decide such matters according to our Constitution. I’m introducing a bipartisan War Powers Resolution tomorrow to prohibit our involvement.”

“No war in Iran. It’s time for every member to go on record,” said Khanna in a post on X Monday comparing the current conflict to the United State’s involvement in Iraq in 2003. “Are you with the neocons who led us into Iraq or do you stand with the American people?”

Fourteen House Democrats, including New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, have joined the resolution, which has received pushback from some pro-Israel lawmakers.

“If AOC and Massie are a yes, that’s a good bet that I’ll be a no,” said New York Republican Rep. Mike Lawler in a post on X Monday. “A nuclear Iran will seek to eradicate Israel and all but ensure WWIII. We cannot allow that to happen. We must stand with Israel.”

Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine introduced a companion resolution in the Senate Monday, calling for a debate and vote in Congress before using any military force against Iran.

“It is not in our national security interest to get into a war with Iran unless that war is absolutely necessary to defend the United States. I am deeply concerned that the recent escalation of hostilities between Israel and Iran could quickly pull the United States into another endless conflict,” said Kaine in a statement.

“The American people have no interest in sending servicemembers to fight another forever war in the Middle East. This resolution will ensure that if we decide to place our nation’s men and women in uniform into harm’s way, we will have a debate and vote on it in Congress,” the statement continued.

Sanders’ No War Against Iran Act, which seven Democratic senators have signed, seeks to prohibit the use of federal funds for military action against Iran without authorization from Congress.

“Netanyahu’s reckless and illegal attacks violate international law and risk igniting a regional war. Congress must make it clear that the United States will not be dragged into Netanyahu’s war of choice,” Sanders said in a statement announcing the bill. “Our Founding Fathers entrusted the power of war and peace exclusively to the people’s elected representatives in Congress, and it is imperative that we make clear that the President has no authority to embark on another costly war without explicit authorization by Congress.”

Senators that have signed onto Sanders’ bill include Peter Welch of Vermont, a cosponsor; Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts;   Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who was among the earliest critics of Israel’s attack on Iran; Ed Markey of Massachusetts; Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin; and Tina Smith of Minnesota.

Sanders first introduced the legislation in January 2020, and at the time Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Jewish New York Democrat and Senate minority leader, signed onto it. Schumer has not supported the new legislation, underscoring a lack of support from the majority of Democrats who have expressed support for Israel’s attack on Iran.

Some opposing U.S. intervention have taken a stronger stance, saying that the United States simply should not enter the war, with or without congressional debate. They include some in Trump’s MAGA movement who have been openly feuding with him.

Under scrutiny over his positions on Israel, the ascendant New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani declined to condemn the phrase “Globalize the intifada” while speaking on a podcast on Tuesday.

Asked by the host of “The Bulwark,” which bills itself as being for moderate liberals, what he thought about the phrase and another widely used at pro-Palestinian protests, “From the river to the sea,” that have been criticized as antisemitic, Mamdani denounced antisemitism but rejected the critique.

“I know people for whom those things mean very different things,” Mamdani said in the episode, released on Tuesday. “Ultimately what I hear in so many is a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights.”

“Globalize the intifada,” used widely used at pro-Palestinian protests, is seen by many as a call for violence against Jews. “Intifada,” which means “uprising” or “shaking off” in Arabic, was the name of two violent Palestinian uprisings including one from 2000 to 2005 that killed an estimated 1,000 Israelis in terror attacks, including on buses, at cafes and at recreational centers.

In recent months, as Jewish targets faced multiple violent attacks by people who said they were acting on behalf of the Palestinians, the phrase has faced renewed scrutiny.  “When you repeat slogans like ‘globalize the intifada,’ you are inciting violence against Jews in the United States and around the world,” New York Rep. Ritchie Torres tweeted after two people were shot to death outside the Capital Jewish Museum last month. “The danger of incitement is no abstraction.”

After Bulwark host Tim Miller suggested that he shared concern about the phrases, Mamdani said he viewed “From the river to the sea” and “Globalize the intifada” as “super different … like different genres.” But he said he would not want to prohibit either of them.

“I am someone who I would say am less comfortable with the idea of banning the use of certain words,” he said. “And that I think it is more evocative of a Trump-style approach to how to lead a country.”

He also suggest that he thought the phrase “Globalize the intifada” was sometimes misunderstood, invoking a major act of Jewish resistance against the Nazis in the process.

“I think what’s difficult also is that the very word has been used by the Holocaust Museum when translating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising into Arabic, because it’s a word that means struggle,” he said. “And as a Muslim man who grew up post-9/11, I’m all too familiar in the way in which Arabic words can be twisted, can be distorted, can be used to justify any kind of meaning.”

Mamdani, a state Assembly member and democratic socialist, is polling second behind former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary, which takes place on Tuesday. He has drawn criticism from some Jews and pro-Israel voices over the course of the campaign over his record on Israel, which includes founding a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine in college, supporting the BDS movement to boycott Israel, organizing a rally while in office to call for divestment from Israel, and saying he would not visit Israel as mayor. (Every mayor elected since Israel’s founding has visited.)

Mamdani, who would be New York City’s first Muslim mayor, has reportedly also taken heat from some on the left for being too soft on Israel. He has said Israel has a right to exist, though not specifically as a Jewish state.

His campaign has focused on progressive policy proposals for the city, including free buses and government-run grocery stores, that are seen as ambitious but likely impractical. He has also proposed diverting funds from the police department to a new community safety division that would tackle hate crimes, including against Jews.

“What we need to do is focus on keeping Jewish New Yorkers safe,” he said on the podcast. “And the question of the permissibility of language is something that I haven’t ventured into.”

New York City Mayor Eric Adams came under fire from Jewish groups and others after sitting for an interview on the porch of the mayoral mansion Saturday with Sneako, an influential antisemitic streamer.

Adams is seeking to run for reelection on the ballot line “EndAntiSemitism.” He has also signed an executive order to recognize the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism and delivered multiple speeches about antisemitism and in support of Israel.

But Saturday night after he puffed cigars with Sneako, whose real name is Nicolas Kenn De Balinthazy, for an hour-long interview, Adams faced backlash for platforming the conservative streamer who frequently spreads anti-Israel sentiment on his platforms. Sneako has also spread antisemitic conspiracy theories and been banned by YouTube, Twitch and Kick.

“First, the President dines at Mar-a-Lago with Nick Fuentes and Kanye West—both unrepentant antisemites,” said Rep. Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat, in a post on X. “Now, the Mayor is smoking cigars at Gracie Mansion with Sneako—yet another antisemite, who once declared: ‘Down with the Jews.’”

“Who’s next on the guest list—David Duke?” Torres continued.

Torres’ post references a stream Sneako posted in March 2024 in which he encountered three children on an anonymous video chat site who claimed to be Palestinian, and said to them, “Free Palestine, down with the Yehud.”

During his interview with Sneako, Adams advocated for using cryptocurrency to send money to relatives abroad without “paying those exorbitant fees” and recommended that “every American” read FBI Director Kash Patel’s book “Government Gangsters.”

“Every American should read that book because there is a, they use the terminology of deep state, whatever term you want, there’s a permanent government that’s connected, the media is part of it, the prosecutors are part of it, the government officials that have been in the game for 30, 40 years they all know each other,” said Adams.

In a press briefing about public safety on Monday, Adams addressed the criticism of his meeting with Sneako and told reporters that “hindsight is 20-20” when asked if he should “vet people better.”

“This was not a planned interview,” said Adams. “I didn’t know his history, I don’t support anything that is criticizing any group in the city.”

Adams told reporters that he had been on the back porch of Gracie Mansion with his son, Jordan Coleman, smoking cigars when “other people came to join.” He later disclosed that he had invited the conservative influencer Amber Rose to the residence so she could meet his son, saying that she brought Sneako: “When she came in, she brought a friend, and he was the friend she brought.”

Adams said he had not altered his behavior because of who his guests were, and he reiterated his commitment against antisemitism.

“I just try to be authentic and true to who I am,” he siad. “So no matter where I record it, or who records me, they’re going to see the authentic Eric. You look through that entire conversation I had with that young man, you didn’t hear anything antisemitic, you didn’t hear anything that I haven’t said before about my life.”

The interview included a discussion of Jewish identity. During the stream, Rose and Adams asked Sneako about his own ethnicity. Sneako replied, “My mom’s Filipino, and my dad is half Black and quarter Jewish-quarter white.”

Sneako had previously shared that information with the Jewish streamer Adin Ross, holding up a blurred DNA profile and saying that his grandfather was a Holocaust survivor. But in conversation with Ross, Sneako also refused to call Adolf Hitler evil and also promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories about the Holocaust.

When asked by Ross in a stream in April 2023 whether Hitler was evil, Sneako replied, “I think he was a bad person, I don’t know if he was evil, I haven’t met the guy.”

In September 2024 in another stream with Ross, Sneako appeared to cast doubt on the gas chambers used to kill Jews during the Holocaust, a frequent argument among Holocaust deniers.

“I’m not saying like it didn’t happen, I’m just saying why would they have wooden doors in the gas chambers?” asked Sneako. “How do you fit 6 million people in a gas chamber? Why not just shoot them like every other genocide?”

In August 2024, Sneako also posted on X, “We’re sick of hearing about the holocaust.”

Since Saturday’s livestream interview, Jewish groups have strongly condemned the mayor’s decision to host the streamer.

Jews for Racial & Economic Justice Action, a left-wing nonprofit group, accused Adams of using his “EndAntisemitism” ballot line as a “transparent PR stunt” in a post on X along with a photo of Adams and Sneako shaking hands.

“This is something we’re unfortunately getting used to: elected officials telling us they’re committed to combating antisemitism, even running for office on it, but giving a platform to avowed antisemites,” Phylisa Wisdom, the executive director of the New York Jewish Agenda, a progressive advocacy group, said in a statement.

“It matters whose voices we platform, and having Sneako broadcast from the people’s house in the most Jewish city in America is unacceptable. There is no possible misunderstanding when a person has said ‘down with the Jews,’” the statement continued.

Betar Worldwide, a far-right pro-Israel group, also criticized Adams, accusing him in a post on X of smoking cigars with “Jew hating ‘influencer’ sneako.”

“Adams has been terrible for the Jews during his time as mayor now he’s hosting a terrible anti semite!,” the post read.

Both Adams and Sneako have since rejected the criticisms they’ve faced since the interview. In a livestream, Sneako held up a New York Post article that labelled him a “hate influencer” and accused the media of painting criticism of Israel as antisemitism.

“It doesn’t seem like any of the journalists watched the interview,” said Sneako. “They didn’t even quote it. They didn’t quote about the fact that I’m Jewish. And I said in the interview itself that I’m Jewish when I was asked my ethnicity by the mayor.

“Do they talk about the fact that my family died in Auschwitz, that I have family, that I’m a product of the Holocaust? They don’t mention that,” he continued.

“They say ‘hate influencer’ because I criticize Israel and they want to discredit you by calling you antisemitic,” said Sneako. “But here’s the truth. Nobody gives a f—k about like, that word has no more meaning. Have you noticed that? Antisemitism is being used so much to silence people who are speaking the truth. Nobody believes in it anymore. It doesn’t it doesn’t hold any weight.”

Rose defended Sneako in a post on X, writing, “FAKE NEWS!!! @nypost I was there and know @sneako!! He’s a Jew! Liarrrrrsss why are you trying to sabotage @NYCMayor???”

What a week to be Jewish Democratic mayoral candidate Brad Lander.

On Tuesday, Lander — who, as New York City comptroller, is the highest-ranking Jewish official in the city’s government — was arrested by federal agents at an immigration court in Lower Manhattan after he linked arms with a person that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials were attempting to detain.

Numerous journalists were present at the court at 26 Federal Plaza and witnessed the arrest, including AM New York reporter Dean Moses, who posted a video to X in which Lander, 55, can be heard saying, repeatedly, “Do you have a judicial warrant?”

Comptroller Brad lander was just arrested by ICE at federal plassa. pic.twitter.com/eVkdGwkn8f

— Dean_Moses (@Dean_Moses) June 17, 2025

During Lander’s roughly four-hour detention, his wife, Meg, took over the candidate’s social media account, posting updates. Several New York City politicians flocked to Federal Plaza to demand Lander’s release, including Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist candidate for mayor who is regularly polling a close second behind frontrunner and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Lander and Mamdani cross-endorsed each other on Friday.

Gov. Kathy Hochul called Lander’s arrest “bullshit,” adding: “How dare they take an elected official, who’s been going down there for weeks, to escort people who are afraid to walk into a courthouse in the United States of America?”

The dramatic turn of events captured widespread attention among New Yorkers as well as observers across the country — Tuesday afternoon, “Brad Lander” became one of the most-searched terms on the internet in the United States, per Google Trends.

By the late afternoon, a crowd had assembled at Foley Square demanding for the comptroller’s release — which appears to have happened sometime before 4:30 p.m. Lander appeared outside the courthouse holding hands with his wife and Hochul; he then made an appearance at the rally.

“When immigrant rights are under attack, what do we do?” Lander yelled through a bullhorn at the crowd, which responded, “Stand up! Fight back!”

.@NYCComptroller @bradlander is out and has joined the crowd at Foley Square. This never should have happened, and as he said: he gets to go home tonight. Way too many don’t. pic.twitter.com/lf9955AQuZ

— New York Jewish Agenda (@NYJewishAgenda) June 17, 2025

The hugely viral sequence of events caps a very busy period for Lander, who, last week, was effectively endorsed in the New York Times by a panel of 15 New Yorkers who are “deeply involved in the life of the city,” including restaurateur Danny Meyer and Howard Wolfson, the former Deputy Mayor in Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s administration.

In New York Times editorial project dubbed “The Choice” that was published last Thursday, seven of the 15 panelists selected Lander as their “top choice” to be New York’s next mayor, citing his “detailed knowledge of city government and finances, his record as a consensus builder and his responsible approach to leadership.”

This almost-endorsement quite possibly buoyed Lander’s performance at the second — and final — Democratic mayoral candidate debate, which took place that evening. During the debate, Lander “won more attention on Thursday than in the last debate and seemed energized by his support earlier in the day from a panel convened by The New York Times’s opinion section,” the New York Times reported.

The New York Times’ Editorial Board reiterated some of the panel’s earlier praises in a semi-endorsement published on Wednesday. The newspaper called Lander an “alternative to the two front-runners,” Cuomo and Mamdani, who “demonstrates a welcome ability to learn from experience” and “exudes competence if not inspiration.”

Earlier in June, Lander received attention for his $2 million, 30-second ad that shows him riding Coney Island’s iconic Cyclone roller coaster while calmly taking notes on a legal pad, taking phone calls and — yes — eating a hotdog. “New York City is a ride in itself,” a voiceover says. “Buckle up, remain seated, and vote for Brad Lander.”

 

Should Lander, 55, be elected mayor, he brings years of city government experience to the role. Before becoming comptroller in 2022, Lander spent 11 years representing the 39th District — which covers Park Slope and other parts of Brooklyn — in City Council.

A native of St. Louis, Lander moved to New York City in 1992, at age 23, where he worked for progressive political groups like Brooklyn’s Fifth Avenue Committee and the Pratt Center for Community Development.

He is also proud of his Jewish identity. His two children, Marek and Rosa, are named after Jewish heroes: Marek Edelman, a leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and Rosa Schneiderman, a labor leader. A longtime resident of Park Slope, he told the New York Jewish Week last July that he “attends synagogue about once a month,” occasionally at the Reform Congregation Beth Elohim and at Kolot Chayeinu, a progressive congregation where he is a member, and he recently shared that he “almost became a rabbi” before turning to politics.

In a race where Israel has played a role despite being 5,700 miles away, Lander considers himself a “liberal Zionist who fiercely opposes the occupation,” and has voiced support for a “Jewish democratic Israel that’s both the homeland for the Jewish people, but grants full and equal social and political rights to people regardless of their religion.”

Tuesday’s dustup with ICE was not Lander’s first arrest while protesting immigrant rights. In August 2019, during President Trump’s first term, Lander was one of 40 Jews who were arrested in New York City for demonstrating against Amazon’s ties with ICE.

Throughout the long election season, Lander has consistently polled at third place among the Democratic mayoral candidates. At the moment, it’s too soon to tell whether or not Tuesday’s events will move the needle for him.

Early voting is currently underway for the Democratic mayoral primary and Election Day is next Tuesday, June 24. For a Jewish guide to the candidates, click here.

If, as Irving Kristol wrote, a neoconservative is a liberal who’s been mugged by reality, then what do you call an “American First” president who is cheering Israel’s attacks on Iran, increasingly claiming credit for them and seemingly leaving the door open to the United States jumping into the fight?

That’s the question upending the MAGA movement this week as several of its most prominent figures — including Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene — have raised varying levels of alarm over U.S. support for Israel’s attacks on Iran and the potential of direct U.S. involvement.

That potential seemed to be increasing on Tuesday as Trump held a lengthy Situation Room meeting with top advisors about the Israel-Iran conflict. Ahead of the meeting, multiple people close to the situation told Axios they believed Trump was leaning toward entering the conflict, and in a series of Truth Social posts before going into the meeting, Trump himself signaled that he now saw the conflict, which he public discouraged before its start, as his own.

“We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran,” he wrote, adding, “Nobody does it better than the good ol’ USA.” He ended the messages with two words: “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!”

Earlier this week Trump had already swung back against the isolationists with a social media post urging “somebody please explain to kooky Tucker Carlson that, ‘IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!’”

Greene quickly came to Carlson’s defense. “Foreign wars/intervention/regime change put America last, kill innocent people, are making us broke, and will ultimately lead to our destruction,” she posted to X. “That’s not kooky. That’s what millions of Americans voted for. It’s what we believe is America First.”

It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks, Trump told The Atlantic’s Michael Scherer: Only he gets a say in what qualifies as “America First.”

“Well, considering that I’m the one that developed ‘America First,’ and considering that the term wasn’t used until I came along, I think I’m the one that decides that,” Trump reportedly said. “For those people who say they want peace — you can’t have peace if Iran has a nuclear weapon. So for all of those wonderful people who don’t want to do anything about Iran having a nuclear weapon — that’s not peace.”

However ahistorical Trump’s claims of authorship, the president unquestionably reinvigorated the term and brought it back into the political mainstream. But that isn’t dissuading or deterring the likes of Carlson, a fan of Henry Ford, the most prominent early leader of the America First Committee that staunchly opposed the entry of the United States into World War II. (Ford was later joined on the committee by Charles Lindbergh.)

Shortly after Israel launched its first wave of attacks on Iran, Carlson took to X to frame the battle between the “warmongers and peacemakers.” “Who are the warmongers?” Carlson posted. “They would include anyone who’s calling Donald Trump today to demand air strikes and other direct US military involvement in a war with Iran. On that list: Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Rupert Murdoch, Ike Perlmutter and Miriam Adelson. At some point they will all have to answer for this, but you should know their names now.”

In his newsletter on Friday he accused Trump of being “complicit” in Israel’s “act of war.”

Then this week he kept up his criticisms on Bannon’s podcast, saying: “The point is, if you think that saying, ‘Hey, let’s focus on my country, where I was born, where my family’s been for hundreds of years, that was the promise of the last election, please do it,’ if you think that’s hate, you know, you’ve really lost perspective, I guess, is what I would say.”

“Anyway,” Carlson added, I think it’s going to happen. Who cares what I think.”

“You think we’re going to join in the offensive combat [operation]?” Bannon asked.

“Yes, I do,” Carlson replied. “I do.”

“Well, we have to – we can’t – we have to stop that,” Bannon said.

Far-right Trump supporter Laura Loomer was having none of it. She urged followers to “take screenshots of every single right winger who is shit talking Trump right now.” In a separate post Monday, she asked: “Can we stop pretending like @TuckerCarlson is a true Trump supporter?” she wrote on X Monday.

Loomer had seemingly previously found herself on the opposite side of the Trump World foreign policy debate, when she reportedly convinced the president to order then-National Security Adviser Michael Waltz to fire a half-dozen aides. While Loomer’s motives were unclear, and her stated priority tends to be loyalty, the firings were seen as a blow to those favoring a more hawkish Trump administration foreign policy, including on Iran. Waltz himself later found himself pushed out of his White House job, with some reports suggesting that one factor was Trump’s discomfort at learning of coordination between Waltz and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netayahu on potential military options to destroy Iran’s nuclear program.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, a loud and long critic of U.S. wars in the Middle East, found herself dragged into the fight, as reporters peppered Trump aboard Air Force Once about her opening remarks at a House Intelligence Committee hearing in late March. Gabbard testified that the intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme leader Khomeini has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.”

“I don’t care what she said,” Trump said. “I think they were very close to having.”

For her part, Gabbard — a darling of the anti-war MAGA crowd — was quoted this week as saying that she and Trump are “on the same page” on the topic of Iran’s nuclear weapons timeline. “President Trump was saying the same thing that I said in my annual threat assessment back in March. Unfortunately too many people in the media don’t care to actually read what I said.”

In the same opening statement in March, Gabbard said U.S. intelligence agencies would continue to monitor the situation, while noting the “erosion of a decades-long taboo in Iran of discussing nuclear weapons in public, likely emboldening nuclear-weapons advocates within Iran’s decision-making apparatus.” She also testified that Iran’s enriched uranium was “at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons.”

As the possibility of U.S. intervention appeared to grow on Tuesday, some sought to consider how U.S. intervention in Iran could be squared with an America First outlook after all.

“If you imagine the basic Benjamin Netanyahu pitch to the White House — in effect, Let us have a go at the Iranians, and you can decide whether to explicitly support us once you see the outcome — it’s easy to see how Trump might decide that an ‘America First,’ national interest-based foreign policy is compatible with letting the Israelis try to settle all accounts,” wrote the New York Times columnist Ross Douthat.

And Vice President J.D. Vance — an avatar of the isolationist wing — directly addressed burgeoning criticism of Trump in a lengthy post about “the Iran issue” on X. Without mentioning Israel at all, Vance argued that Iran’s nuclear ambitions and unwillingness to negotiate represented a pressing foreign policy priority.

“The president has shown remarkable restraint in keeping our military’s focus on protecting our troops and protecting our citizens,” Vance wrote. “He may decide he needs to take further action to end Iranian enrichment. That decision ultimately belongs to the president.”

He added, “Of course, people are right to be worried about foreign entanglement after the last 25 years of idiotic foreign policy. But I believe the president has earned some trust on this issue.”