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Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

August 26, 2026

Sinai Rabbis Publish Guide to Help Clergy Navigate Unimaginable Loss

Books /

When clergy receive the call that a child has died, there is no script for what comes next.

A rabbi, priest, imam or pastor may know the prayers, the rituals and the logistics of planning a funeral. But accompanying parents through what many consider the most devastating loss imaginable requires something more: language, emotional fluency and an understanding that grief after the death of a child follows no timetable.

That need inspired the publication of “Grieving a Child: A Companion Guide for Clergy,” a new book co-authored by Sinai Temple Co-Senior Rabbis Nicole Guzik and Erez Sherman, along with clinical psychologist Denise Mandel-Becker, licensed clinical social worker Lori Weinstock and the late Milo Mandel. The guide, seven years in the making, combines pastoral wisdom, therapeutic insights, poetry and practical resources for clergy supporting bereaved families.

Available on Amazon, the volume may be the first comprehensive Jewish pastoral guide devoted specifically to helping clergy respond to the death of a child. Yet its authors say the lessons extend beyond rabbis to therapists, educators, community leaders and anyone struggling to support grieving parents.

“There is no greater responsibility than showing up for a family who has lost a child,” Guzik told The Journal. “This book brings a Jewish lens to grief, offering practical tools to anyone guiding a family through such a devastating moment.”

The origins of the project trace back more than two decades to a tragedy within one Los Angeles family.

In 2004, Denise Mandel-Becker’s son, Jared, died at a young age. The loss reverberated throughout the extended Mandel family and the broader Jewish community. Jared’s grandfather, Milo Mandel, observed that even experienced clergy — caring and deeply committed rabbis — often struggled to know how best to help parents facing such an unfathomable loss.

That realization stayed with him for years.

Eventually, Mandel approached Guzik and Sherman, who had developed a close relationship with the family through Sinai Temple, about creating a resource that could fill that gap. The result is a 213-page handbook that guides clergy through every stage of accompanying a grieving family: from the first phone call through funeral planning, shiva, anniversaries, birthdays and the long months and years that follow.

The book includes sample eulogies, prayers, ritual options, guidance for speaking with siblings, self-care tools for clergy and a section devoted to what to say — and what not to say — to grieving parents.

“We realized that clergy need not only words of comfort, but also clarity about what can unintentionally cause harm,” Guzik said. “People often say, ‘There are no words,’ but there are words that can help.”

For Sherman, the project grew out of a need he repeatedly witnessed among rabbis. Over the years, colleagues frequently turned to rabbinic listservs asking for guidance after a child in their congregation had died.

“We kept seeing rabbis say, ‘Does anyone have resources for this?’” Sherman said. “This is the resource we wish we had early in our rabbinates.”

The book intentionally bridges different Jewish traditions. While rooted in Jewish ritual and halachic practice, it offers multiple approaches so that clergy from Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and other backgrounds can adapt it to their communities.

Its format is also deliberate. Guzik noted that the book was designed to resemble the small manuals rabbis often carry for life-cycle events, allowing clergy to keep it close at hand before entering a hospital room, funeral chapel or shiva home.

The volume is distinguished not only by practical guidance but by its emotional depth. Interspersed throughout are poems written by Mandel-Becker, who said poetry became a way to express feelings that grieving parents often struggle to articulate.

In the book’s introduction, Guzik and Sherman write that no formal rabbinic training fully prepares clergy for “the raw, emotional pain a parent experiences when faced with the death of their child.” The guide, they write, is intended not as a rigid manual but as a companion — one that reminds clergy that they are not alone in the sacred task of supporting families during their darkest moments.

For Mandel-Becker, whose clinical practice focuses on grief and trauma, the project represents a larger philosophy: transforming pain into purpose.

“At the root of this project is my abiding love for and devotion to my beautiful and cherished Jared,” she writes. “May his light continue to shine and radiate out to all those this guide touches.”

There is another layer of meaning as well. Milo Mandel, whose vision launched the project, passed away shortly after the book’s publication. His family and co-authors describe him as the driving force behind bringing the guide into the world.

For the authors, that legacy embodies the book’s central message: that even in the face of unbearable loss, compassion, presence and community can help transform grief into an enduring act of care.

As clergy across faith traditions continue to accompany families through life’s most difficult moments, “Grieving a Child: A Companion Guide for Clergy” offers something many have long lacked — a map for walking alongside those whose worlds have been forever changed.

Sinai Rabbis Publish Guide to Help Clergy Navigate Unimaginable Loss Read More »

Before Auschwitz: The Forgotten Nazi Program That Paved the Way for the Holocaust

Film /

A housewife suffering from  severe depression. A child with an intellectual disability. A man living with mental illness. A little girl with epilepsy. They were people whose lives were deemed worthless by the Nazi regime – and who became targets of a systematic campaign of murder.

This is where the Holocaust story begins – not in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, but earlier, with the Nazi regime’s Aktion T4 program, a state-sponsored campaign to murder people with disabilities.

Beginning in 1939, the program transformed doctors, medical institutions and bureaucratic systems into instruments of mass murder. It also developed killing procedures, gas chambers and a network of personnel that would later play a crucial role in the Holocaust.

In his documentary “Disposable Humanity,” director Cameron S. Mitchell revisits this largely forgotten chapter of Nazi history, telling the stories of an estimated 250,000 to 300,000 people with disabilities murdered under the Nazi regime and examining how Aktion T4 helped establish the methods and machinery of mass killing that followed.

The film opens with a train journey. Mitchell, an Emmy-winning filmmaker, travels to Auschwitz alongside his parents, David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder, both leading scholars in Disability Studies whose research has explored the history of Nazi persecution of people with disabilities. Over more than two decades, the family has visited memorial sites, archives and former institutions across Germany and Austria in an effort to uncover this largely overlooked chapter of Holocaust history.

From Auschwitz, the Mitchells continue to former hospitals, psychiatric institutions and killing centers connected to Aktion T4 – including Hartheim and Bernburg, sites where people with disabilities were sent to be murdered. The film follows the family as they meet memorial directors, historians, archivists and relatives of victims, piecing together how institutions originally presented as places of care became centers of systematic killing. Along the way, they confront another painful reality: the history of disabled victims of Nazism has remained largely at the margins of public memory, including at some of the sites where they were murdered.

Aktion T4 was not simply a precursor to the Holocaust. It was a deliberate program in which the Nazis developed and tested methods, personnel and bureaucratic systems that would later be used on a much larger scale.

“There was such planning and intention there,” he said.

The medical façade was an essential part of the system. Doctors were involved in the killings, victims were deceived into believing they were receiving medical treatment and gas chambers were disguised as showers. “The medical veneer of everything is very important,” Mitchell said.

The system also involved the systematic transfer of disabled people between institutions, often without their families knowing where they had been taken. Families were sometimes sent false death certificates, leaving them without any way of knowing what had happened to their loved ones.

One of the victims whose story the film tells is Amelia, through her relative Anthony “Andy” Heckler. Amelia had been institutionalized with postmenopausal depression. Her husband, a member of the Wehrmacht, repeatedly wrote to the institution asking that she be released. When those requests went unanswered, he asked simply to visit her. He was denied, with officials arguing that because Amelia had not been sterilized, allowing the couple to be together could result in them having children.

For Mitchell, Amelia’s story reveals that the Nazi program was not simply about killing people who were already institutionalized. “I think it was a vision of a future of Germany without certain types of people in it,” he said.

That vision was rooted in the eugenics movement, which predated the Nazis. Mitchell points to the influence of American eugenics, including forced sterilization programs in California, which the Nazis studied as they developed their own policies. In Germany, the 1933 Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring established a system of hereditary health courts that ordered the forced sterilization of people considered to have hereditary conditions, including deafness, blindness, Huntington’s disease and alcoholism.

The persecution of disabled people also exposed a striking gap in postwar justice. At the Nuremberg trials, many T4 victims were German nationals, making their murders difficult to prosecute under an international war-crimes framework. “None of the perpetrators were held accountable,” Mitchell said, noting that many eventually returned to medical careers after the war.

The film also examines Aktion 14f13, which extended T4 methods into the concentration-camp system, targeting prisoners deemed too sick or disabled to work.

Victims were often deceived into entering the killing facilities, where the gas chambers were disguised as showers. At Bernburg, an observation window and a mirror positioned in the corner of the gas chamber allowed nurses to monitor the room from outside until the last signs of life disappeared.

The same institutions that presented themselves as places of medical care had been transformed into carefully organized killing centers.

The film also makes this history personal. Mitchell’s father, David, uses a wheelchair, and at Bernburg the family had to bring their own ramp so he could enter the gas chamber. In the film, David describes the heaviness of being inside the room, calling the experience deeply important despite the barriers that made it difficult for him to enter a memorial dedicated to disabled victims.

That contradiction becomes one of the film’s most powerful observations: disabled people were among the first victims of the Nazi killing program, yet they were among the last victims to be publicly remembered. The memorial to the T4 victims in Berlin did not open until 2014.

But who were the people willing to murder some of the most vulnerable members of society, including children? Mitchell’s answer is unsettling precisely because it is so ordinary.

“There weren’t super villains,” he said.

They were young doctors and other workers who were offered financial incentives and career advancement. Some were promised double or triple their salaries, while others received additional food and alcohol rations. At the end of the day, some of those involved in the killings would leave the killing centers and go to local bars, socializing with people who lived nearby.

The film includes photographs of some of these workers, smiling and seemingly at ease. The contrast between their ordinary appearance and what they were doing is deeply disturbing. The buses used to transport disabled people to their deaths were ordinary-looking vehicles, while mobile gas vans were also used in the killings.

“It was entirely diabolical and yet systematized,” Mitchell said.

Despite the film’s success on the festival circuit, there is one striking absence: “Disposable Humanity” has yet to be screened at a film festival in either Germany or Poland – the two countries at the center of the history it explores. Mitchell says the filmmakers approached German festivals, including the Jewish Film Festival of Brandenburg in Berlin, but were turned down.

That is particularly striking given the reception the film has received elsewhere. At its 2025 world premiere at the Slamdance Film Festival in Los Angeles, “Disposable Humanity” won the Unstoppable Audience Award and an Unstoppable Grand Jury Honorable Mention. It has since screened at festivals and venues across the United States and internationally.

What does it say that a film about Aktion T4 has found audiences around the world but has yet to find a place at a film festival in Germany or Poland?

“Disposable Humanity” will have an Oscar-qualifying theatrical run at the Laemmle Santa Monica Film Center Aug. 28 – Sept. 3. The filmmakers will also hold a global online premiere with a live Q&A on Sept. 4.

Before Auschwitz: The Forgotten Nazi Program That Paved the Way for the Holocaust Read More »

When Renting Beats Buying, Los Angeles Risks Losing Its Jewish Future

Commentary, Opinion /

The Los Angeles Times has supplied a stark new indication of Southern California’s housing failure. According to its August 19 analysis of Realtor.com data, the median monthly cost of buying a home with up to two bedrooms in metropolitan Los Angeles is $4,836, compared with a median rent of $2,787. That $2,049 difference is the largest among the nation’s 50 biggest metropolitan areas. Renting may therefore be the rational financial decision for an individual household today, but a region in which purchasing even a modest home makes dramatically less sense than renting has created a dangerous long-term incentive: families remain in Los Angeles only until marriage, children or the need for greater stability forces them to reconsider. Renting itself does not preclude a family from building a meaningful life, but involuntary and indefinite renting exposes families to rising rents, property sales and repeated displacement. 

Parents cannot confidently determine where their children will attend school, which congregation they will join or whether grandparents and grandchildren will remain near one another. They hesitate to invest emotionally and financially in neighborhoods they may soon be forced to leave. When homeownership becomes unattainable, Los Angeles does not simply lose prospective buyers; it risks losing the families most prepared to put down roots, raise the next generation and sustain communal institutions for decades.

For the Jewish community, this threat is particularly severe because Jewish life is built around proximity, continuity and intergenerational relationships. According to the 2021 Study of Jewish LA, approximately 565,000 Jews live in nearly 300,000 Los Angeles households, making this the nation’s second-largest Jewish community within a federation service area. Yet 19% of those households described themselves as financially struggling, while 27% spent at least 30% of their income on housing. Among financially struggling Jewish households, the housing-burden rate reached 59%. Families that need to live near a synagogue, Jewish school, kosher market or relatives who provide childcare face an additional geographic premium. 

Observant families need to remain within walking distance of a congregation, placing them inside some of the region’s most expensive neighborhoods. In a 2019 article published by eJewishPhilanthropy, young Orthodox professionals described an impossible triangle in which remaining in Los Angeles forced them to choose among owning a home, paying for Jewish education and saving for retirement. Families confronting that choice may delay having children, remain in homes they have outgrown, abandon day school, postpone retirement savings or leave Southern California entirely. The loss is not merely financial: each departure breaks another strand connecting children to grandparents, families to congregations and future leaders to the institutions that educated them.

The strain is already visible in Jewish education. According to Builders of Jewish Education, greater Los Angeles Jewish day schools enrolled more than 10,000 students in 2019–20 and 9,592 in 2020–21. During the 12 years ending in 2019–20, enrollment in Community, Conservative and Reform schools fell by 20%, or approximately 900 students, while Orthodox-school growth offset much of that decline. The proportion of students receiving need-based tuition assistance nevertheless increased from 40% to 55%, demonstrating how difficult participation had become even before the latest escalation in housing costs. 

The 2021 Study of Jewish LA found that only 15% of Jewish K–12 students attended a day school or yeshiva, and among parents who had previously enrolled a child or considered enrollment, 51% cited cost as a reason for not doing so. Jewish summer camp faces similar affordability pressures. 

Government records cannot provide a precise count of Jewish Angelenos moving to particular cities because neither the Census nor the Internal Revenue Service records religion, but the general migration pattern and the expansion of Jewish infrastructure reveal a significant geographic redistribution. 

More concrete signs of growth appear farther inland. Chabad of Bakersfield, which began in the rabbi’s home, opened a permanent 10,000-square-foot center in 2017 after 15 years of local activity. Chabad of Riverside has reported that both the Inland Empire and its Jewish population have grown sufficiently to require a permanent center on nearly an acre of property. Chabad of Temecula, founded in 1999, is now developing the first dedicated synagogue and Jewish campus in southwestern Riverside County, with land purchased in 2022 and foundations begun in 2023. 

These developments cannot establish that every participant came from Los Angeles, but they are the institutional footprints left when Jewish households spread toward communities where a house and family life appear more attainable.

The same pattern is visible in states receiving large numbers of former Angelenos. Chabad’s expansion in those destinations offers a revealing indicator of where Jewish communal demand is emerging. In the Dallas–Fort Worth area, Chabad of Carrollton-Lewisville began operating in 2024 to serve Jewish households moving into expanding northern suburbs. 

The clearest connection to California appears in Boise, where Chabad’s rabbi estimated in 2022 that 1,500 to 2,000 Jews lived in the city and another 1,000 to 2,000 elsewhere in Idaho. He reported that more Jews may have moved to Boise during the preceding few years than during the previous decade and specifically identified California as one source of newcomers. Chabad growth is not a precise migration census—new centers can also reflect natural growth, increased engagement or better outreach—but its new buildings, programs and personnel mirror the same redistribution visible in IRS records.

Research from the California Policy Lab explains why this redistribution may become permanent. Californians who left the state moved to communities where monthly housing costs averaged $672 less and median homes cost almost $398,000 less. For Jewish families, those figures represent the possibility of bedrooms for children, a dining room for Shabbat, predictable access to a congregation and enough financial security to pay tuition, attend camp and contribute to communal institutions. 

Jewish Los Angeles must therefore begin treating housing as a matter of communal survival by developing family and workforce housing on communal land, connecting educational assistance with homeownership support, strengthening institutions in emerging inland communities and conducting a longitudinal study of the Jewish families who leave. 

If Los Angeles becomes a place where only inherited homeowners and the exceptionally wealthy can establish permanent lives, its synagogues and schools may retain their buildings while losing the middle-class families who give those buildings a future. Chabad centers rising in Temecula, Rancho Mirage, Franklin, suburban Dallas, Florida and Boise are signs of Jewish resilience, but they are a stark reminder that Jewish families will put down roots somewhere, and if Los Angeles offers them no ground in which to do so, those roots will increasingly grow elsewhere.

Lisa Ansell is Assoc. Director of the USC Casden Institute and Lecturer of Hebrew Language at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion Los Angeles.

When Renting Beats Buying, Los Angeles Risks Losing Its Jewish Future Read More »

Rabbis of LA | Justice, Justice Rabbi Simonds Pursues

Rabbis of LA /

It’s been 10 years since Rabbi Joel Simonds founded the Jewish Center for Justice,  based in what was then University Synagogue but is now the Resnick Family campus of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple. Was it social justice or did something else attract him to the rabbinate? “Social justice was an aspect,” he said, “but I think it was a sense of Jewish community, a sense of connection to Israel and, really, a calling to serve. Plus a desire to learn.”

He grew up in a small Jewish community in Lancaster, in northern Los Angeles county, the hundreds of Jews a tiny fraction of the city’s 170,000 residents.  “When I started to connect with the larger Jewish community,” he said, “through Jewish summer camps, through larger Jewish youth affiliations in my teens – I didn’t realize a Jewish life could be more than the smallness in which I grew up.” The teenaged, small-town boy had only one goal ¬ the only one he knew. “I said, ‘Oh, I want to be a rabbi’ because that was my only sense of what my desire for Judaism was.”

After graduating from U.C. Santa Barbara, Simonds expanded his vistas to examine life as an adult Jew: Jewish life, Jewish communal life and Jewish religious life. “In my younger years,” he admitted, “I didn’t know there was a difference.” 

As he grew a little older, he thought, “’Okay, can I have a rich Jewish life without pursuing the rabbinate? Or can I work in the Jewish community without having to pursue the rabbinate?’ After looking at that for a little bit, I realized, ‘wait a second, I am feeling a sense of calling to learn, as a rabbi.’”

What ultimately led him to the rabbinate “was finally understanding the difference between working in the Jewish community, living in the Jewish community, then becoming a rabbi. But I had to do that first. What ultimately led to becoming a rabbi was wanting to learn the tradition through the eyes of the rabbinate, then wanting to work in and serve the Jewish community through a rabbinic lens.”  

His childhood rabbi was “instrumental in showing me care, love and a deep appreciation for Jewish life. … Then as I grew older, I was really surrounded by various rabbis, from congregational to communal, from those who were justice-oriented to those who were other-oriented. Once I saw the totality, I was able to pursue my own path.”

That path was decided in his early 20s, when he was in Washington, D.C., working in the Jewish community, “pursuing justice.” He thought, “‘Okay, now that I am working in the Jewish community, now that I am living in the Jewish community and pursuing justice … but I wanted more. I had to do that to go to the rabbinate.”

He wanted to do it “not just as a Jewish communal professional, but I wanted to do it through the lens of religiosity, that I wanted to be involved in justice, and involved in lifecycle, and involved in the pursuit of the betterment of the Jewish people.”

In Washington, he worked for the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, “and some other justice-oriented stuff.”  During rabbinical school, justice was a major cause, and so was Zionism. After rabbinical school at Hebrew Union College, he came to University Synagogue, “where my time was incredible.”

As a rabbi, he said he feels that from a religious standpoint, justice is “really is how I read the text. It’s how I connect to Torah, how I read Torah, from looking at Jewish history, to looking at Jewish tradition, to looking at the Jewish community to looking at our text. It’s a pursuit at being God’s partners, making things a little better for each generation.”

It is, he continued “about expanding not detracting. How ever we look at that – expanding opportunities, expanding rights, and then I really look at the Jewish experience here in America. It has been one that our ancestors only could have dreamed of. I really do look around and say Jeremiah and Isaiah were only able to scream at the gates of the city center and of the city walls.” But “as a free Jew in America in the 21st century,” Rabbi Simonds can do “what they only dreamed. So I should do that. That is really how I look at justice.”

He also had “a strong connection to Zionism, and a strong connection to the people, the state. This idea is part and parcel of Judaism. Unfortunately, we are living in a time where there are larger forces that try and say ‘if you are a pursuer of justice, you cannot be a lover of Israel.’ My whole belief is quite the opposite. I would say the idea of the state of Israel is the pursuit of justice. Justice for the Jewish people who never were able to live free and just for thousands of years. We can wrestle with right-wing and left-wing governments,” he said, and “right-wing and left-wing policies.”

Fast Takes with Rabbi Simonds

Jewish Journal: Your favorite vacation destination?

Rabbi Simonds: Maui and Jerusalem.

J.J.: Best book you have read?

R.S.: I am feeling nostalgic – “Exodus.”

J.J.: Your favorite Shabbat moment?

R.S.: The first Shabbat I spent with my sons (now 12 and 14) in Jerusalem.

Rabbis of LA | Justice, Justice Rabbi Simonds Pursues Read More »

Birthright Israel Summer Event, New Interim Rabbi, NLP Hike

Movers & Shakers /

Approximately 1,700 young Jewish adults from around the world attended Birthright Israel’s main summer event at the Tel Aviv Amphitheater. Attendees included Miriam Adelson; Birthright Israel International CEO Gidi Mark; and Meir Shamir, chairman of the organization’s Israeli board of directors. The event marked the peak of Birthright Israel’s summer season, during which approximately 15,000 young Jews from 34 countries are visiting Israel for educational trips, volunteer opportunities and fellowship programs.

Against the backdrop of escalating security threats in recent weeks and a sharp decline in tourism to Israel, thousands of participants chose to travel to Israel with Birthright Israel, experience the country firsthand and see the reality beyond the headlines.

Approximately 1,700 young Jewish adults from around the world attend Birthright Israel’s main summer event. Courtesy of Birthright Israel

The festive evening brought together young Jewish adults from around the world for an immersive Israeli cultural experience, culminating in performances by Itay Galo, Netta Barzilai and Eden Golan.

Congregation Kol Tikvah in Parkland, Florida has welcomed Rabbi Cookie Lea Olshein as interim rabbi, beginning a new chapter for the Reform congregation following Rabbi Bradd Boxman’s 17 years of leadership. She will lead Kol Tikvah through a year of reflection and transition as the congregation prepares to identify its next long-term spiritual leader.

Olshein brings nearly two decades of rabbinic leadership and currently serves as a vice president and executive committee member of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR). She previously led Temple Israel of West Palm Beach, where she became the first woman to lead an established congregation in Palm Beach County, and before entering the rabbinate spent more than a decade as a civil litigation attorney.

“I believe every new beginning carries the possibility of something extraordinary,” Olshein said. “Throughout the coming year, I look forward to exploring new ideas together, honoring the traditions that define Kol Tikvah while creating opportunities to learn, grow, and discover what will help this community flourish for generations to come. My hope is that this journey will be filled with inspiration, celebration, and transformation.”

Alumni and current members of Federation’s New Leaders Project hike together at Fryman Canyon. Courtesy of Jewish Federation Los Angeles

On Aug. 16, approximately 20 Jewish young professionals—all of them alumni or current participants of Jewish Federation Los Angeles’ Rautenberg New Leaders Project (NLP)—turned out for a morning hike.

Held at Fryman Canyon in Studio City, the Sunday outing was an opportunity for NLPers to get some exercise while schmoozing with others who have experienced the unique civic leadership-oriented program offered by Jewish Federation Los Angeles.

For more than 30 years, the L.A. Federation’s NLP initiative has provided training and professional development to elevate the next class of outstanding Jewish civic leaders in Los Angeles. Current participants of the program attend monthly events and become engaged in the most pressing issues facing the city, including transportation, homelessness and legislative efforts to combat antisemitism. Alumni remain active in the program as well, with many of them attending events to serve as mentors for the current cohort.

At Sunday’s optional get-together, the NLP hikers met up at the bottom of the Fryman trail, gave brief intros about themselves, and then set off on the uphill trek. About halfway through the 2.7-mile hike, they veered off the main path and climbed stairs to the TreePeople campus, where they learned about water conversation efforts, rainwater capture and other greening solutions for our drought-stricken city. 

Undeterred by the hot weather, the group then returned to the main trail and continued hiking. After arriving where they began at the main parking area, everyone said their goodbyes. Not a bad way to kick off a Sunday.

Birthright Israel Summer Event, New Interim Rabbi, NLP Hike Read More »

From Balaboosta to CookUnity: Chef Einat Admony Shares Her Food Across the U.S.

Food /

For the past two decades, Chef Einat Admony has helped shape the way New Yorkers eat Israeli food. Long before shakshuka became a brunch staple and Israeli restaurants multiplied across the city, Admony was introducing New Yorkers to the flavors she had grown up with in Israel.

In 2005, Admony and her husband and business partner, Stefan Nafziger, opened Taim, a tiny falafel shop with five chairs in Manhattan’s East Village. “Back then, there was no real good falafel in New York,” Admony recalled in a Zoom interview with the Jewish Journal. “There were these tough, cardboard-like pitas and watery sauces.”

Coming from fine-dining kitchens, the couple paid close attention to ingredients. “I brought in the best peppers, made the greenest falafel possible, falafel with roasted peppers and harissa,” she said.

Taim quickly became a hit and grew into a multi-location business. In 2010, Admony opened Balaboosta, her more ambitious modern Israeli restaurant, which helped expand New York’s understanding of Israeli cuisine beyond hummus and falafel. The restaurant later moved to the East Village and earned strong reviews from leading critics, including New York Magazine, which gave it two stars and named it one of the city’s best new restaurants.

The name Balaboosta comes from Yiddish and refers to a woman who is an accomplished homemaker, someone who knows how to run a household, feed people well and make everyone feel welcome.

Today, the restaurant’s menu ranges from hummus with green schug and warm chickpeas and fried olives with labneh and harissa oil to Yemenite soup dumplings filled with beef and served with hilbeh, brick chicken with walnut muhammara, branzino and saffron-pistachio tahdig.

Admony became a familiar figure in New York’s culinary scene, appearing on billboards, cooking competitions and Food Network programs. Celebrities including Sarah Jessica Parker, the Clintons and Robin Williams dined at her restaurants. Williams, she recalled, would even play with her baby while waiting for falafel.

It came as a surprise to her, then, when earlier this month New York Magazine presented her in a very different context. In its 31-page “Habibi City” package about Arab and Muslim life in New York, the magazine’s Grub Street article, “When Eating Out Is Political,” criticized Admony and other Israeli chefs, arguing that they had benefited from marketing food with Arab, Palestinian, Mizrahi and North African influences as sophisticated Israeli cuisine, while Arab and other Middle Eastern restaurants had historically been treated as cheaper and less prestigious.

The article also repeatedly invoked the term “genocide” in discussing Israel.

Against the backdrop of New York’s increasingly polarized political climate and growing anti-Israel sentiment since Oct. 7, the article reflected the increasingly hostile discourse surrounding Israel and Israelis.

“Many Israeli chefs landed somewhere in between: hosting fundraisers, making content, writing op-eds,” the article stated. “Admony took to wearing the yellow-ribbon pin symbolizing the Israeli hostages and continued to collaborate on videos with Zionist influencer…”

Admony, however, doesn’t let it bother her. Her restaurants, like other Israeli restaurants in New York, continue to draw customers. And her career has moved well beyond the traditional restaurant model.

For the past six years, Admony’s food has also been available in cities across the country through CookUnity, a chef-driven meal-delivery company. Customers, including those in Los Angeles, can order her dishes and have them delivered to their homes each week.

It isn’t Balaboosta, with its bustling dining room and freshly prepared food, but it offers a different kind of perk: a little piece of an acclaimed New York chef’s cooking arriving at your door, ready to heat. 

For Admony, CookUnity is more than an additional outlet for her food. It has also changed the economics of her business. The company supplies the ingredients and raw materials, Admony provides the cooking, and CookUnity handles pickup and delivery.

Her menu includes chicken shawarma with pearl couscous and amba aioli, chicken cutlet with za’atar potatoes, braised lamb shawarma with tahini and vegan harissa chili with green sabzi rice.

“This delivery business changed my perspective on restaurants,” she said.

“Working with them is a gift that has put my life on solid financial footing,” she added.

Admony’s cooking is rooted in the Jewish traditions she grew up with in Israel. She was raised in Bnei Brak, the daughter of a Persian mother and a Yemenite father. Her mother was born in Iran and came to Israel with her parents and seven siblings as a child.

“She was perhaps 11 years old, and her parents, who had just made aliyah, decided to send her to live with an Iraqi foster family, where she spent eight years,” Admony said. “She didn’t speak Arabic and they didn’t speak Farsi, but she learned the language quickly and also how to cook amazing Iraqi food. We always had amba in the refrigerator.”

Sabich, the Iraqi-Jewish sandwich of fried eggplant, egg and amba, was a family favorite and eventually appeared on the Taim menu.

“A lot of famous chefs told me, ‘The first time I ever ate sabich was at your restaurant, or the first time I ate harissa or understood what really good falafel was — it was at your restaurant,’” she said. “I heard that over and over again throughout the years. People really got to know Israeli and Middle Eastern cuisine through me.”

But Taim’s success eventually came with a price. Admony brought outside partners into the business, a decision she now regrets. She sold most of her shares four years ago and says the new partners gradually pushed her out.

“They took the company and ran it into the ground,” she said.

This summer, Taim’s New York locations were shuttered after New York State seized them over unpaid taxes.

Admony had once dreamed of taking Taim across the country. She also remembers people sitting in her tiny East Village restaurant, taking notes and later opening their own concepts.

“I wanted Taim to be everywhere in the U.S. because the food was really good,” she said. “But if I could go back, I wouldn’t do it. There’s something very human about always wanting more. It never ends. Now I never want to open another restaurant. It’s an extremely difficult industry with no money in it,” she said.

The Taim name was also copied and used by other restaurants in cities across the U.S., as well as in Barcelona, Japan and elsewhere. 

“When I was younger, it bothered me,” she said. “It doesn’t anymore. I’ve always preferred that people copy me rather than that I have to copy anyone else. I have a talent for reinventing myself.”

Although Admony is not religious, she has always made a point of keeping Fridays free from work, reserving the day for her husband and their two children, a 17-year-old daughter and 20-year-old son.

“They have an amazing palate. It’s wonderful to see,” she said. “They really understand food, and they’ve traveled to so many places and ate at restaurants all around the world.”

She never pushed them to follow her into the restaurant business. “It’s a very difficult world,” she said. “I know how hard it was for me to raise two children while building my career. I didn’t want them to go through that or have to choose between work and home.” 

From Balaboosta to CookUnity: Chef Einat Admony Shares Her Food Across the U.S. Read More »

Nature’s Candy: A Sweet Fig, Date and Nut Cake

Food /

What could be sweeter than starting the New Year with a cake? The Ashkenazi custom of serving honey cake for Rosh Hashanah is well known. But in my Moroccan Sephardic family, the tradition is to bake cakes filled with dried fruit and nuts.

This special recipe for a Fig, Date and Nut Cake transports me straight back to my mother’s kitchen. This cake is soft, deep, rich and perfectly delicious.

Many years ago, my mother was inspired to make this gluten free version when Ines, my brother’s daughter, developed a gluten allergy. Along with the dried fruits, nuts and almond flour, my mother included a handful of chocolate chips. She knew how much the children loved chocolate and she wanted them to think they were eating chocolate cake!

My mother didn’t use written recipes and she never thought to write her recipes down either. She cooked from memory, instinct and feeling, as so many mothers do. As much as I loved this cake, I never paid close attention when my mother would bake it and I never put the recipe down on paper.

It has been four years since my mother passed away, but every time I bake a cake, I think of this one. I have been trying to recreate the recipe. While it is still not exactly my mother’s, I believe I have come very close.

The sweet fragrance of this cake as it bakes is unforgettable. When the syrup begins simmering on the stove, the entire house fills with the scent of the holiday. It feels like a celebration.

This cake is very aromatic and flavorful. The dried figs and dates give the cake a rich, caramel flavor balanced by the tenderness and texture of the almond flour, sliced almonds, and chopped pecans. The dried cherries bring another layer of sweetness and while the chocolate chips are optional, they are a wonderful way to make the cake appealing to children.

Baking this cake brought back the memories of Friday nights and holiday gatherings at my parents’ home. After eating dinner and this yummy cake, all the grandchildren would begin a dance competition. They would try to outdo each other with their fancy moves and dance routines. We laughed and we cheered and applauded. Those were such joyful, unforgettable evenings.

As the New Year approaches, I find myself dreaming and praying that one day I will be blessed with grandchildren eating my cake and dancing after dinner, just as my parents once did with us.

—Rachel

Fig, Date and Almond Cake

1 cup dried figs, chopped

1 cup pitted dates, chopped

½ cup boiling water

½ tsp baking soda

1½ cups almond flour

½ cup all-purpose flour, or additional almond flour or gluten-free flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp ground cinnamon

¼ tsp salt

¾ cup brown sugar or coconut sugar

3 large eggs

½ cup olive oil

1 tsp vanilla extract

½ cup sliced almonds

½ cup chopped pecans or walnuts

½ cup dried cherries or raisins

½ cup chocolate chips, optional

Honey Citrus Syrup

½ cup honey

¼ cup orange juice

Zest of 1 orange

1 tsp lemon juice, optional

½ tsp cinnamon

Optional Garnish:

Chopped figs, dates, almonds 

Place the chopped figs and dates in a mixing bowl. Pour the boiling water over them, sprinkle in the baking soda, and stir. Let the mixture soak for about 10 minutes. If the dates are already tender, you can skip soaking them and soak only the dried figs. (The baking soda helps tenderize the dried fruit and deepen its flavor.) Once softened, mash the fruit with a fork until it forms a coarse paste. It does not need to be perfectly smooth.

In a separate bowl, combine the almond flour, all-purpose flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt.

Whisk the eggs and brown sugar until frothy and golden. Add the olive oil, vanilla and fig-date paste and stir until well combined.

Gradually fold the dry ingredients into the wet mixture, mixing gently until just incorporated. Stir in the sliced almonds, chopped pecans or walnuts, dried cherries or raisins, and chocolate chips, if using.

Pour the batter into a parchment paper lined 9-inch round cake pan. Smooth the top and bake at 350°F for 40 to 45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

While the cake bakes, combine the honey, orange juice, lemon juice, orange zest and cinnamon in a small saucepan. Simmer gently, for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Let the cake cool in the pan for 10 minutes after removing it from the oven. Pour the warm syrup evenly over the top. This step makes the cake moist, fragrant and especially flavorful.

Garnish with chopped roasted almonds and additional figs and dates if desired.Serve warm or at room temperature.

The cake can also be wrapped well and frozen for up to one month. Thaw it in the refrigerator for one day before serving.

Sharon Gomperts and Rachel Emquies Sheff have been friends since high school. Their cooking and storytelling project has grown into a devoted following on Instagram @sephardicspicegirls and on Facebook at Sephardic Spice SEC Food. Website sephardicspicegirls.com/full-recipes.

Register to join them at their Sweet & Salty Simanim cooking demo for @yesh_tikva.org, September 1, 2026 7pm-9pm

 

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Table for Five: Ki Tavo

Judaism, Torah /

One verse, five voices. Edited by Nina Litvak and Salvador Litvak, the Accidental Talmudist

And you shall call out and say before the Lord, your God, “An Aramean [sought to] destroy my forefather, and he went down to Egypt and sojourned there with a small number of people, and there, he became great, mighty, and numerous nation. 

– Deuteronomy 26:5

Miriam Mill Kreisman

President Tzaddik Foundation

 When I read this verse, I always get stuck on one phrase: “with a small number of people.”  It sounds almost insignificant. A few people going down to Egypt, just trying to survive. If you looked at them then, you probably wouldn’t have guessed that they would become a great and mighty nation.

But that is exactly the point.

The story of the Jewish people has never really been about having the biggest numbers, the easiest circumstances or the most power. It has been about what we do with what we have. We started small. We were strangers in a foreign land. We were vulnerable, and at times, people wanted to destroy us. Yet somehow, generation after generation, we kept going. I think there is something very relevant about that today. Sometimes we look at ourselves and think, “What difference can one person really make?” One voice, one good deed, one family, one small community — it can all feel insignificant.

But Jewish history tells us otherwise.

Great things can come from very small beginnings. A handful of people can become a nation. One person can inspire another. One small act can create a chain reaction that reaches people we may never even meet. Maybe that is why we are commanded to remember where we came from. Not just to remember that we survived, but to remember that we were once small — and we still became great. 

So perhaps the message is simple: Never underestimate what can grow from something small.

Rabbi Eliot Malomet

Host of “Parasha Talk” on YouTube

My father was an enterprising Montrealer. He moved to Ottawa and built buildings. His father came to Montreal from Odesa. He opened a business, lost everything in the Depression and became a presser in a clothing factory. His father, I don’t know about. Nor any of the fathers before him. I imagine that one of them must have been a teacher, because Malomet derives from Melamed, a teacher. 

I imagine sitting in a room with all my fathers. The Wandering Aramean would be sitting in the first chair. The earliest fathers, including a few generations of pilgrims who brought their first fruits to the Temple, would be seated in the first rows. At the end of the last row, would be my grandfather, the presser from Odesa, my father, the builder from Ottawa, me, a rabbi from New Jersey, and my son, a resident of Jerusalem, with his two Jerusalemite daughters on his lap. Each father would speak. We would hear their stories. This one crossed the Red Sea to freedom, and this one, post-Expulsion, crossed the Mediterranean Sea from Spain to Turkey. This one crossed the Atlantic to Montreal. I crossed the Canada-U.S. border to New Jersey. My son made Aliyah. 

Our father was a wandering Aramean. He descended to Egypt and became a great nation. God redeemed the first descendants and we descended from them. Today, we may not have any first fruits to present. But what we do have is a great and unending story.

Aliza Lipkin

Writer and Educator, Ma’aleh Adumim, Israel

 A farmer bringing his first fruits to the Temple recites “Arami oved avi” before a concise retelling of Jewish history. The declaration opens personally, then expands into the nation’s story, culminating with words of gratitude after the basket of fruits is placed before the altar.

Perhaps there’s a hidden message here for Elul. Commentaries link Arami to ramai, a deceiver, who, in the context of Elul, can be the yetzer hara, which rarely announces itself honestly but creeps in through self-deception. “Avi,” my father, is the self I once was, the version of me that let the deceiver in and became defined by that submission. I descend from him, but I am no longer him. In this way, the very struggle with sin fathered my growth. It enlightened me experientially, birthing my transformation.

That former self collapsed under meitzarim, the narrow straits sin itself creates. That is when one turns to Hashem, who helps us emerge, seemingly miraculously, into something new and greater. The fruit isn’t despite the deceit that once fooled me; it’s what grew once I persevered through it.

How meaningful it is to draw close to G-d, fruit by fruit, as we work our way back to restoring the connection that Adam lost when he ate the forbidden fruit. The joy of the “farmer” holding the basket with the fruit of his labor is unparalleled. It connects him to his essence, which connects him to G-d and to all mankind born of Adam HaRishon.

Kira Sirote

Author of “Haftorah Unrolled” – Ra’anana, Israel

When they ask you where you’re from, how far back do you go?

Sometimes I keep it simple: “I’m from Ra’anana.” That usually isn’t the answer they’re looking for, so I continue with, “I grew up in New York” – accurate but misleading. I am actually from Kiev, Ukraine, to be precise but still misleading, as back then it wasn’t Ukraine, it was a republic of the Soviet Union. That is still not precise, because I am still ultimately from here, the Land of Israel.

When my family came to America, American Jews would tell us that their grandparents also came “from Russia.” They were probably trying to find common ground with us (with limited success, as the Russia their grandparents left in 1879 was not the Russia that we left in 1979). But what they were really saying was: “My grandfather was a homeless Aramean, or an Aramean tried to destroy him, or maybe both, he had to go to another country, and now here we are, great, mighty, and numerous in New York.”

When our ancestors would bring the first of the season’s fruit before G-d, they were commanded to remember the steps along the way – the homelessness and the destruction, the greatness that did not last, and the Hand of G-d that took us from step to step. Back then there were so few steps in that story. So many more now. The Hand of G-d continues to lead us, all the way back to where we’re from.

Denise Berger

Freelance Writer

When I think of people who tried to destroy our forefathers, Lavan (the Aramean) isn’t the first person who comes to mind. Ishmael mocked and tormented Isaac so badly that Sarah had Abraham send him away.  The rivalry between Jacob and Esau defined both of their lives. Centuries earlier Nimrod threw Abraham into a furnace, trying to destroy him in the most literal way. And all of these incidents were attempts at destruction, not actual success.  

This passage is telling us Lavan succeeded.  It says he destroyed.  This very intentional language calls us to look more deeply at what took place.  Lavan repeatedly deceived his nephew/son-in-law. There was a protracted experience of psychological abuse.  

The pasuk jumps from Jacob’s experience with Lavan to the initial sojourn in Egypt, even though these events were decades apart.  The thing about psychological abuse is that it’s insidious.  It infects a person’s self-concept, making them vulnerable to further harmful situations in the future.  The Torah is connecting the dots, between the deception inflicted on Jacob and what ultimately happened in Egypt.  The taskmasters tricked us into slavery.  When Hashem took us out of Egypt, He also removed us from what could be an endless spiral of victimhood and a low self-concept.  There is no shortage of people who are caught in that sort of spiral. That’s why the pasuk appears in the Haggadah. Redemption is about how we see ourselves as much as it’s about our physical surroundings.     

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Rosner’s Domain | Has Oct. 7 Made Israelis More Religious?

Rosner's Domain /

We worked on an interesting report dealing with Israeli society. What is the report about? There is an official version and a subversive version. The official version is the report itself, as presented on the website of JPPI: “Trends of Traditionalism Among Nonreligious Youth in Israel.” That is indeed the subject of the research, and that is indeed the main content of the report.

What, then, is the subversive version? Let’s try a title: “Trends of Getting Swept Away by Exaggerated Media Headlines.” No — this is not the subject of the research. And yet, this title could be set up as competition for the main title.

The war’s impact on the extent of traditional observance in Jewish society in Israel is an issue under extensive discussion and debate. Some of the phenomena of traditional observance are highly visible and therefore draw media and public interest: students putting on tefillin in secular schools, the popularity of songs containing references to Jewish tradition, joint prayers of soldiers, and the wearing of symbols that outwardly express faith. Political undertones are many. Cultural concerns are many. 

Several surveys showed that there is substance to the claim that a degree of Jewish “strengthening” is evident in the Israeli public. However, all the studies so far have dealt with adult society. At the same time, a large part of the public discourse is not about adult society — it is about the youth. What was discovered in the new research are the reason for phrasing an official title alongside a subversive title. First, there is an increase in the observance of traditions among some of the youth. Second, the impression of such an increase is much stronger than the increase itself. 

In the research, we asked about a great many customs and beliefs of youth, such as, do they wear tzitzit, or pray, or read the Bible, and so on. What we discovered in quite a few cases is that there is no correlation between self-reporting on the observance of customs (what I do), and reporting on friends (what my friends do). For example, 7% of the secular youth say they put on tefillin more than they did in the past. But what happens when we ask them if their friends put on tefillin? The response jumps from 7% to 26%. A quarter of the youth say their friends put on tefillin more often.

Of course, this is not a contradiction. When a teenager says, “I don’t put on tefillin more than in the past,” it is enough that he has one friend out of 20 classmates who started putting on tefillin for him to be able to say, “My friends do put on tefillin more than in the past.” When examining the data, one discovers differences between customs that everyone sees and customs that not everyone sees. If Riki lights Shabbat candles at home, no one sees it, unless she uploads a picture to Instagram. In contrast, if Romi decided to wear only a long skirt from now on, everyone sees that when she comes to school. 

This is exactly what can be cautiously identified in the data as well. The customs that stand out more as traditions that have strengthened are those done in public (going to synagogue, tzitzit, modesty). These are the customs and traditions regarding which the greatest gap is evident between the personal report (what I do) and the report on friends’ actions (what they do). Why the gap? Because everyone sees it, so everyone reports it. On the other hand, regarding things done at home (like Shabbat candles), or things a person does by themselves (reciting Psalms), the reporting gaps are much smaller.

Actually, this is something that could have been understood intuitively, but sometimes we forget to think about it. When there are three boys in a school, or 10, who decide to put on tefillin during recess — and there is a principal who either does or doesn’t allow it — and then the Minister of Education announces that he will issue permission to put on tefillin in every school — and then parents’ committees rise up and shout that it’s unthinkable — and so on and so forth — there is a great deal of noise that makes one forget a simple reality: 10 put on tefillin, but there are probably alongside them 400 who do not put on tefillin. 

Bottom line, in an attempt to describe the situation as it is: Similar to the situation among young adults, and to the situation in Israeli society overall, one can identify a certain increase in the observance of Jewish traditions among nonreligious youth. The increase is not taking place simultaneously across all groups, but mainly among those that already had a stronger affinity for tradition to begin with. In fact, in the most secular group, the “totally secular,” whose size in the general Jewish population is between a quarter and a third, an opposite trend of a decline in the observance of traditions is actually evident. Meaning, alongside the trend of strengthening in the observance of Jewish tradition in some groups, one can also notice a deepening of the polarization between the groups. Some are doing “more” and some are doing exactly “less.” And everyone — all of us — is making a lot of noise.

Something I wrote in Hebrew

This text explains the Week’s Number. 

Coalition supporters, or voters leaning toward the coalition, are willing to take the risk that their party will not pass the electoral threshold at a much higher rate than opposition voters or those leaning toward the opposition. In other words: if you want Netanyahu to be the next prime minister, it is harder to convince you not to vote for Ofer Winter or Gilad Erdan just because he might not pass the electoral threshold (which would make it harder for Netanyahu to become prime minister). But if you want Eisenkot to be the next prime minister, it will be easier to convince you not to take a risk on Tropper and Hendel, because they might not pass the electoral threshold (which would make it harder for Eisenkot to become prime minister).

A week’s numbers

The Electoral Threshold fear gap (coalition voters are more willing to take the risk that their vote will not be counted).

 

A reader’s response

Ari Levinson asks: “Can Turkey become a real threat to Israel?” My response: A short answer will do: Turkey has the second largest military in NATO (after the U.S.). 

Shmuel Rosner is senior political editor. For more analysis of Israeli and international politics, visit Rosner’s Domain at jewishjournal.com/rosnersdomain.

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The Nexus of the Ruffalo Problem

Commentary, Opinion /

The Nexus Project has finally answered the question that has trailed it since its founding: What is its definition of antisemitism actually for? Apparently, it is for acquittals.

Let me offer some background for readers who have better things to follow than definitional politics. The Nexus Document is the antisemitism definition preferred by critics of the mainstream IHRA working definition, drafted by scholars who worry that IHRA sweeps too much criticism of Israel into the category of Jew-hatred. Nexus protects “even contentious, strident, or harsh criticism of Israel for its policies and actions.” Its champions present it as the careful alternative, the one that knows where the line really is. Fine. A definition written by the defense bar is still a definition, and this week its authors were handed a test case that any first-year student could grade.

Mark Ruffalo, celebrity opponent of Paramount’s $110 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, shared a video of Safra Catz, Oracle’s Israeli-born Jewish executive, and wrote, “Look how she revels in what we now have come to see as a genocide, which was built on an apartheid system of oppression powered by Oracle.” He explained that “this is the company that Larry Ellison is using to fund his son David’s Warner Bros acquisition,” called Ellison a “classic Oligarch,” and warned that Oracle’s technologies “will most likely be merged into one of the largest media conglomerates in the world and one day used on you.” Paramount called that what it is: antisemitic tropes invoked in service of a business dispute.

Then the Nexus Project weighed in. “Claiming Mark Ruffalo is antisemitic is misguided,” it announced. “He expressed his opinion about a corporation’s actions and investments, not an executive’s religion. Whether you agree with him or not, he did not cross the line into antisemitic speech.” 

To be clear, if Ruffalo had written that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, Nexus would shield him, and under its own terms that would be a defensible application. But that is not what he wrote, because Israel is not a party to this merger. The Gaza material was imported into a domestic business dispute for one purpose: to indict the Jews in the deal.

And once the target is Jews rather than Israeli policy, the Nexus Document itself takes over. Read it. Their document says it is antisemitic to hold “individuals or institutions, because they are Jewish, a priori culpable of real or imagined wrongdoing committed by Israel.” Catz sells software. She commands no army. Her “culpability” in Ruffalo’s telling, indeed her alleged delight, flows entirely from her identity and her country of birth. The document further says it is antisemitic to characterize Israel “as being part of a sinister world conspiracy of Jewish control of the media, economy, government.” Ruffalo’s post assembled precisely that machine: Jewish money, Israeli entanglement, a media giant, and technology that will “one day” be “used on you.”  

Running the substitution test is easy here, because Ruffalo even supplied the control group. Jamie Dimon is helping finance the same transaction, and Ruffalo attacked him too, but with ordinary antitrust invective about cozy relationships and oligarchs. No genocide. No “reveling.” The vocabulary changed exactly once, when the target was Jewish. Nexus wrote a double-standards principle into its document for exactly this comparison. At least in theory.

Notice what Nexus did choose to rebut. Nobody said a word about anyone’s religion. No critic of Ruffalo’s post claimed he attacked Catz’s faith. Nexus is arguing with an accusation no one made, because the actual accusation, that the post is antisemitic under Nexus items 3(a) and 3(c) by their plain text and principle 2 (double standards) by application, has no answer. When an organization built by scholars responds to a textual argument by refuting a strawman, it is telling you it read the text and lost.

Nexus did not rule alone. J Street soon offered the same absolution in catechism form. 

Antisemitism, it explained, is “blaming Jewish people for the actions of the Israeli government”; what antisemitism is not is “criticism of a corporation’s monopolistic actions and investments”; and “we cheapen the fight against antisemitism when we blur that distinction.” Blaming a Jewish person for the actions of the Israeli government is J Street’s own opening definition of the offense, and blaming a Jewish person for the actions of the Israeli government is what the Catz post does, by name, on video. We do cheapen the fight against antisemitism when we blur the distinction between Jew-hatred and criticism. We cheapen it to nothing when, having drawn the distinction correctly, we shield the Jew-hatred anyway.

The Nexus Project says it exists to stop accusations of antisemitism from being “used as a shield” against good-faith criticism. On Sunday it used its own letterhead as one, and J Street held its coat. This has stopped being a scholarly disagreement about where the line sits and become credentialed cover for people who cross it, and the Jewish community can see the difference. So the ask is simple, offered in the same good faith both groups demand of everyone else. Apply your own published definitions to the Catz post, clause by clause, in public. Or retire them, and stop presenting yourselves as referees of a foul you will not call. 

Mark Goldfeder is CEO of the National Jewish Advocacy Center and a law professor at Touro Law School. Follow him on X @markgoldfeder

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