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- For this Persian Jewish casino magnate in Nevada, Israel is part of the deal

- Amid record fundraising, ADL lays off staff to consolidate focus on antisemitism

- Pick-and-deli-roll? Brooklyn Nets draft Jewish duo in an NBA first

NEWS | JUN 27, 2025, 6:12 AM EDT | UPDATED JUN 27, 2025, 12:19 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

For this Persian Jewish casino magnate in Nevada, Israel is part of the deal

Max Grinstein

Atlantis Casino Resort Spa CEO John Farahi’s journey from Tehran to Reno

John Farahi stands just off the casino floor at the Atlantis Casino Resort Spa — one of the two properties that he manages through Monarch Casino & Resort, Inc. Courtesy of Atlantis Casino Resort Spa

RENO, NEVADA — For John Farahi, a proud Persian Jew and chief executive of the Atlantis Casino Resort Spa, the casino business is about more than generating profit for his shareholders — it’s also about promoting Israel and Jewish values in this corner of the American West.

In recent weeks, Farahi, who was born in Tehran, has grown frustrated with commentators who claim that Israel is at war with Iran.

“It is not Israel at war with Iran. Israel has no issue with Iran. It has never had an issue with Iran. It is Iran that says that Israel has no place to be a Jewish state, and the mullahs will do whatever it takes to destroy the Jewish state,” Farahi said.

After the U.S. attacked Iran’s nuclear program, “The western world should be relieved,” said Farahi. “What has happened is absolutely a success for, truly, the whole Middle East.”

Driving down Virginia Street, Reno’s main drag, one might encounter ads for loose slots and buffet specials on casino marquees that tower overhead. Yet, until recently, tourists outside the Atlantis also encountered an unexpected PSA: a video of Israeli and American flags fluttering in the wind, emblazoned with the motto “#StandWithIsrael.”

The “#StandWithIsrael” sign on the Atlantis’ front marquee featured a video of an Israeli and American flag fluttering in the wind. Courtesy of Atlantis Casino Resort Spa.

“After Oct. 7, we all had a responsibility to support Israel,” Farahi said in an interview in the Atlantis’ lavish boardroom. “It was a huge shock that an attack like this could happen.”

Farahi has long been a passionate advocate for Israel in Reno. Now, with the conflict between Israel and Farahi’s homeland of Iran, that project has become even more personal.

A kid from Tehran finds his home in the high desert of Reno

Farahi, born in 1949, grew up in an entrepreneurial family in Tehran. His father, David, graduated from the University of Tehran as a pharmacist and distributed medicine across the city. The business enterprise eventually expanded to include an office carpet factory and one of the largest chicken hatcheries in Iran.

Farahi’s identification card from his youth in Tehran. At 15, Farahi immigrated to the United States to live in Oakland with family friends from Iran. Courtesy of John Farahi

In 1964, at 15 years old, Farahi left Iran for the San Francisco Bay Area to live with family friends who had moved to the United States to promote Bahaism. There, he enrolled at Oakland Technical High School, and, eventually, California State University, Hayward. Farahi was not alone; by 1976, around 20,000 Iranian international students were studying at American universities — the largest number of any foreign country.

In 1970, Farahi’s parents met him in the United States. Initially, the family considered purchasing a shopping center and an apartment complex in the Bay Area. When those sales fell through, their real estate broker told the family about a motel that was on the market in a far-flung casino town: Reno.

“My dad said, ‘You must be crazy,’” Farahi recalled. “He had never been there, but he had heard about Reno, Nevada for gambling, prostitution and divorce.”

When the family took a road trip to Reno in 1972, however, they noticed that Reno’s high desert environment was reminiscent of Tehran. Farahi’s father changed his tune, and the family purchased the Golden Road motel.

The Farahis pose for a family portrait, with John standing farthest to the right. His father, David, agreed to move to Reno because the high desert environment reminded him of Tehran. Courtesy of John Farahi

In 1991, the Farahis redeveloped the motel property into a casino hotel under the Choice Hotels Clarion brand.  Five years later,  the newly-independent Atlantis opened to the public in 1996. Monarch Casino & Resort, Inc. — the publicly-traded holding company that the family helms — also operates a property in Black Hawk, Colorado.

“He runs a business that has around 6,000 employees, and everyone in that organization has his ethic of service,” said Rabbi Benjamin Katz of Reno’s Conservative Temple Emanu-El. “He is a strong leader there and in the Jewish community at our synagogue.”

Jewish presence strong in Nevada’s gaming industry

Around 85,330 Jews live in Nevada, the vast majority in the Las Vegas area — about a seven-hour drive from Northern Nevada. Jewish Nevada’s recent community study found that only 15 percent of Nevada Jews call Reno home.

“There has always been that question of ‘Who is my child going to invite to their bar or bat mitzvah,’” said Rebbetzin Sarah Cunin, co-founder of Chabad of Northern Nevada.

While Nevada does not have the largest Jewish community, the impact of Jews in the Silver State is pronounced. In the heyday of organized crime, the Jewish mafia — nicknamed the “Kosher Nostra” — played an instrumental role in establishing the original Las Vegas casino hotels. In recent decades, Jews have helped popularize the mega resort model in Nevada.

“Jews have made this country in every arena,” Farahi said. “Who are the top two leaders of the [hotel and casino] business? Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn.”

Wynn, born Weinberg, developed iconic casino properties like The Mirage, the Bellagio and Treasure Island in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. The late Adelson, founder of the influential Las Vegas Sands Corp., gained a reputation as a prominent Jewish philanthropist alongside his wife, Miriam. Adelson was a major contributor to political candidates and causes, to Birthright Israel, and to a Jewish day school and Chabad center in Las Vegas that bear the couple’s name.

Farahi is particularly proud of his financial support for Chabad of Northern Nevada since the Cunin family established it in 1997.

“He comes in early, and he sees the vision. The Rebbe’s vision was to touch every Jew,” Rebbetzin Cunin said — referring to Chabad’s late spiritual leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. “John has always been a stalwart supporter of the Rebbe’s vision. He loves Jews. Honestly, he loves being Jewish.”

The Chabad building on Reno’s Moana Lane that also houses its preschool, the Aleph Academy, was previously the Farahi family’s real-estate office. Chabad at the University of Nevada, Reno — run by the Cunins’ daughter and son-in-law — recently announced a $4 million initiative to build its first permanent center. “John really has been a huge supporter of that project,” Cunin said.

“I am especially concerned about how we are melting away in this country,” Farahi said. “I feel that every Jew has a responsibility to teach their children about our contributions to humanity, rather than only the tragic history of forced conversions, expulsion and, of course, the Holocaust.”

The ‘backbone’ of the Jewish community in Reno

Many Jewish communities are centered around a synagogue. In Reno, Jews also congregate at the Atlantis.

In recent years, the Atlantis’ ballrooms have hosted fundraisers for Nevada’s Jewish senator, Jacky Rosen; a gala for Christians United for Israel; and a free screening of a documentary about Menachem Begin. A Jewish deli serves reuben sandwiches and Dr. Brown’s sodas just off the casino floor. And Temple Sinai, the local Reform congregation, holds its Passover seders in the Atlantis’ banquet halls.

“Small synagogues that are able to sustain themselves typically have a few families who want to support the Jewish community,” said Temple Emanu-El treasurer Marc Siegal. “At Temple Emanu-El, we are blessed to have the Farahi family as well as a couple others.”

“He is very committed to bringing people — Jewish and non-Jewish, first-timers and seasoned veterans — to Israel,” Siegal said. Farahi’s guests on these trips — the last of which he completed in May — have included a Nevada Governor and two presidents of the University of Nevada, Reno.

Farahi’s public pronouncement of his support for Israel has not come without its detractors.

One group that was scheduled to host a meeting at the Atlantis threatened to cancel unless the “#StandWithIsrael” sign was taken down from the casino’s marquee. Farahi instructed his sales director to arrange a time for him to speak with the event’s organizer. Farahi came prepared with four documents: the Hamas charter, a map of the Middle East, a history of the Jewish people and a history of the land of Israel.

“By the time I got done, he shook my hand and said this was something to the effect of a ‘real education,’” Farahi recalled. The group’s meeting went ahead as scheduled.

“He is the backbone of the Jewish community in Reno,” said Mark Frank, a member of Temple Emanu-El who has known Farahi for 13 years. “He is a mensch. I realize that isn’t a Persian word, but he is a mensch.”

Strong support for Israel and sympathy for the Iranian people

Farahi has also brought Persian culture to Reno. In March, the Atlantis hosted its annual five-course dinner for Nowruz — Persian New Year — complete with a wine pairing that merged “the rich winemaking traditions of ancient Persia with the innovative spirit of Napa Valley.” In fact, his consideration for the Persian community was one of the reasons Farahi eventually removed the “#StandWithIsrael” video from the Atlantis’ marquee.

“Frankly, when Iran first attacked Israel in 2024, I felt that, since I have a lot of Persian friends here and [members of the] Iranian and Muslim community work here and are living in this community, I was trying to be considerate, so they do not feel that I am directly talking about that one issue,” Farahi said, referring to the volleys of missiles launched by Iran last April in retaliation for an Israeli airstrike on their embassy compound in Damascus.

As Jerusalem and Tehran have traded blows once again, the remaining Jews of Iran are top-of-mind for Farahi — who still has a cousin in the country.

The Farahi family gather at the beach in Iran, with John standing farthest to the left. While his immediate family has immigrated out of the country, he still has a cousin in Iran. Courtesy of John Farahi

“For the minorities, the fall of the Shah was not a good thing,” Farahi said. “We were not there, but we had family there.”

Though scholars debate the exact number of Jews remaining in Iran, most estimates range from 9,000 to 20,000. More than half of the country’s Jewish population lives in Tehran.

“The reason people haven’t left is that there is 2,700 years of Jewish history in Iran. To come out of a country when you don’t have another country’s language, when you don’t have any skills, is difficult,” Farahi said.

Though Farahi is supportive of the Israeli and U.S. military campaigns, he’s skeptical that they can lead to permanent regime change in the country of his birth.

“What happens to Iran is in the hands of the Iranian people,” Farahi said.

Max Grinstein is a student at Yale University who grew up in Reno, Nevada. He’s also a longtime editorial intern at the Prison Journalism Project and was selected for The Bronfman Fellowship as a high school student.

This article was downloaded from https://forward.com/news/732763/iran-israel-persian-jewish-casino-reno-farahi/ at Jun 28, 2025 at 7:21 PM EDT.

NEWS | JUN 26, 2025, 11:15 AM EDT | UPDATED JUN 26, 2025, 1:52 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Amid record fundraising, ADL lays off staff to consolidate focus on antisemitism

Arno Rosenfeld

The organization dismissed 22 workers this week as it moves away from broader civil rights and public policy work

A view of the stage during the ADL Never Is Now Summit in March at Javits Center in New York City. The organization laid off around 4% of its workforce this week. Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Anti-Defamation League

The Anti-Defamation League laid off 22 employees this week, roughly 4% of its workforce, as part of an effort to focus its work more narrowly on antisemitism as it shifts away from broader civil rights and public policy work.

Multiple departments were impacted but none were completely shuttered, according to ADL spokesperson Todd Gutnick. Employees were laid off at the Center for Technology and Society and in the education department, which works on curriculum development related to antisemitism and other forms of discrimination in public schools, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“ADL is always evaluating our programs and structure to best serve the needs of the Jewish community and all Americans as we respond to the new realities of our world,” Gutnick said in a statement.

[If you have additional information about the layoffs contact reporter Arno Rosenfeld on Signal from a non-work device at @arnorosenfeld.08]

The laid-off employees will be paid for the next month in addition to two months severance, “extended benefits coverage and career transition assistance” in exchange for signing non-disclosure agreements. The ADL listed 553 employees in 2022, the most recent year that public records were available for.

The organization has set fundraising records in recent years, raising $163 million last year, according to Gutnick, compared to $55 million 10 years ago. It has also narrowed its focus and adopted a “strategic realignment” that Gutnick said calls for an emphasis on combating antisemitism in K-12 schools and at colleges and universities, through more forceful action than its longstanding educational programs entail, and responding directly to antisemitic incidents.

Jewish Currents reported in March that the organization had shut down its flagship anti-bias training program, called A World of Difference, which focused on identifying a broad array of discrimination.

The magazine reported that the ADL has also removed 134 model lessons from its website covering topics like transgender identity, white privilege and anti-Asian racism, some of which a spokesperson said had only been temporarily removed for revisions.

The ADL was founded in 1913 to respond to antisemitism in the United States, but has long embraced a wider mandate and bills itself as “the leading anti-hate organization in the world” with a mission to “secure justice and fair treatment to all.”

Its Center on Extremism, for example, regularly publishes reports on white supremacist and far-right activity that is not solely targeted at Jews, while the Center on Technology and Society often publishes reports describing problems with content moderation on social media that allows many types of hate and abuse.

But in recent years, and especially since the Israel-Hamas war began two years ago, the organization has found itself at odds with some historic partners in the civil rights community and CEO Jonathan Greenblatt has embraced a narrower focus on defending American Jews.

Greenblatt told a private audience of Republican state officials earlier this month that the current rate of antisemitism was worse than any other form of hate that has occurred during the ADL’s 100-year history.

“I have never seen anything like this before, ever — ever,” he said.

Arno Rosenfeld is an investigative reporter at the Forward covering antisemitism, philanthropy and sexual misconduct. He is author of the Antisemitism Decoded newsletter. You can reach him by email or message him securely on Signal using a non-work device at 202-677-5462.

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This article was downloaded from https://forward.com/news/732493/adl-staff-lay-offs-antisemitism/ at Jun 28, 2025 at 7:21 PM EDT.

SPORTS | JUN 25, 2025, 11:32 PM EDT | UPDATED JUN 26, 2025, 4:38 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Pick-and-deli-roll? Brooklyn Nets draft Jewish duo in an NBA first

Louis Keene

The Nets selected Ben Saraf and Danny Wolf — both Israeli citizens — with the 26th and 27th picks

Danny Wolf with his mother Tina, his father Joe and ESPN’s Monica McNutt after being his selection by the Nets. Image by screenshot/ESPN

After Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic primary Tuesday, some Jewish New Yorkers openly pondered leaving town.

The Brooklyn Nets just gave them two reasons to stay.

In a span of five minutes late Wednesday night, the Nets drafted Israeli point guard Ben Saraf and University of Michigan seven-footer Danny Wolf, taking the two Jewish prospects with consecutive picks in a five-minute span.

In Brooklyn — where Orthodox fans can frequently be seen courtside — Saraf, who plays in the German league, and Wolf will form the first Jewish NBA tandem since 2017. They are also the second pair of teammates in NBA history to hold Israeli citizenship; Wolf, who grew up in the Chicago suburbs, acquired his in 2024 to play for Israel’s under-20 team.

That Saraf, a 19-year-old described by The Ringer’s draft preview as a “lefty jitterbug,” was picked before Wolf came as a surprise, with most predictions ranking Wolf higher as a prospect. After Saraf was selected 26th overall, Wolf, who was projected to go several picks — perhaps a full hour earlier — earlier, was shown on the ESPN telecast fighting back tears.

But before the born hooper could contemplate a career in law or medicine, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver called Wolf’s name a few minutes later. After hugging his three brothers, Wolf donned a Nets cap and ascended the podium to shake Silver’s hand.

“It’s a dream come true,” Wolf told a reporter afterward, standing alongside his beaming parents. “It’s really hard to put into words. I’ve worked so hard to get here, I’ve had such a great support system. I’m excited to work, and I hope Brooklyn knows what they’re getting.”

Wolf’s mother, Tina, told the reporter New York was the destination her son wanted.

Danny Wolf (right) averaged 13.2 points, 9.7 rebounds and 3.6 assists last season as he led Michigan to the Sweet 16. Photo by Dustin Bradford/Getty Images

Meanwhile, the 6-foot-6 Saraf had a good excuse for missing the big night: His current employer, Ratiopharm Ulm, is playing in a winner-takes-all Game 5 in the Bundesliga championship.

The selection of two Jewish players completes a reversal of sorts for the Nets, who in late 2022 became embroiled in an antisemitism scandal after star point guard Kyrie Irving posted a link to a film that denied the Holocaust, blamed Jewish people for slavery and accused them of usurping Jewish identity from Black people. For days, Irving refused to apologize, ultimately leading the NBA to suspend him; the franchise traded him in February 2023.

The Nets newcomers are joining a franchise in the throes of a post-Irving rebuild. The team finished fourth-to-last in the Eastern Conference last season, and some anticipate a trade of the best player from that roster in pursuit of more trade assets. The franchise’s selection of Wolf was their fifth of the first round — the most one team has ever made.

It was conceivable, then, that Saraf — who wears the number 77 because it is the Jewish numerical value of mazal, the Hebrew word for luck — might be allowed to continue developing overseas with so many young players on the Nets’ roster. But almost immediately after his selection, ESPN’s Jonathan Givony said the team plans to bring him over.

Born to parents who both played professional basketball in Israel, Saraf grew up roughly 18 miles northeast of Tel Aviv in the village of Gan Yoshiya. He started playing organized basketball at age 8; recognizing his talent, his parents hired a personal trainer and a strength coach not long after to accelerate his development.

Both picks were regarded favorably by draft analysts. ESPN’s Jay Bilas called Wolf — who transferred from Yale after his sophomore season — “very, very skilled, an excellent rebounder and a very creative passer who can be a facilitator.”

Raised in the Chicago suburbs, Wolf attended a Solomon Schechter Jewish day school and his family kept a kosher home, according to the Detroit Free Press.

He celebrated his bar mitzvah in Israel and later became an Israeli citizen so that he could play for the under-20 national team. He led that team in points and rebounds as they won silver in the 2024 European Championships.

Wolf has been open about his religious identity in interviews with local and Jewish media.

“The most beautiful thing about Judaism,” he told the Free Press in a wide-ranging interview earlier this year, “is the way it connects me with my family. It transcends other things and brings us together.”

Wolf, 21, told the Free Press‘s Mitch Albom about his experience as a college athlete after the Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, which occurred when he was still at Yale.

“Now that I’m on a national stage and in the spotlight, you have ill-minded people that have some not great things to say,” he said. “It’s all around me, on social media, I get it all the time just in my DMs and on comments and whatnot.”

Ben Saraf of Ratiopharm Ulm in action during the Euro Cup last September. Photo by Mateusz Slodkowski/Getty Images

In a game against Dartmouth, Wolf said, more than 80 fans who came to the game “disguised” revealed Palestinian flags shortly after the game started. He said he had learned to push through those incidents.

“It may be corny to say, but I’m just trying to be the bigger person,” he said. “Nothing I can do in the moment will be good for me. Anything I say won’t impact me or them, and it might cause more harm than good.

“Honestly, even with non-Jewish hate, there’s a lot of it out in the world. I’d like to use it as motivation just to try and prove myself right and prove other people wrong.”

Wolf and Saraf are set to enter an illustrious history of Jewish basketball in New York. The first basket in league history was scored in 1946 by the New York Knickerbockers’ Ossie Schechtman, who was Jewish, and played along coreligionists Sonny Hertzberg, Stan Stutz, Hank Rosenstein, Ralph Kaplowitz, Jake Weber, and Leo “Ace” Gottlieb. The league they played in, the Basketball Association of America, later became the NBA.

Omri Casspi and Jordan Farmar became the first pair of Israeli teammates on an NBA roster when they played for the Sacramento Kings in 2017. Casspi is Israeli-born, and Farmar, who was born in the U.S. to an Israeli mother, immigrated before playing in the Israeli league.

In the ranks of active Jewish NBA players, the Nets duo are joining the Portland Trail Blazers’ Deni Avdija and the Sacramento Kings’ Domantas Sabonis, who was reported in 2023 to be converting to Judaism; a third, Amari Bailey, played in 10 games last season and is now in the NBA’s developmental league, the G League.

The last time two Jewish players were picked in the same draft was 2006, when Lior Eliyahu and Yotam Halperin both went in the second round. Neither played a game in the NBA.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the first pair of NBA teammates to hold Israeli citizenship. It was Jordan Farmar and Omri Casspi. Ben Saraf and Danny Wolf are the second such duo.

Louis Keene is a reporter for the Forward. His work has also been published in The New York Times, New York magazine and Vice. He is based in Los Angeles.

- [email protected]

- @thislouis

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This article was downloaded from https://forward.com/fast-forward/732388/brooklyn-nets-draft-ben-saraf-and-danny-wolf-players-back-to-back-forming-first-nbas-first-jewish-tandem-in-decades/ at Jun 28, 2025 at 7:21 PM EDT.

Opinions

- After Zohran Mamdani’s upset, there’s a way forward for pro-Israel progressives

- Pro-Palestinian protesters are suddenly supporting Iran. They might want to talk to some Palestinians

OPINION | JUN 27, 2025, 9:54 AM EDT | UPDATED JUN 27, 2025, 9:55 AM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

After Zohran Mamdani’s upset, there’s a way forward for pro-Israel progressives

Benjamin Ross

In the fight for economic fairness for all, Jews shouldn’t have to give up on defending their particular interests, writes a long-time contributor to Dissent magazine

Zohran Mamdani walks with Brad Lander, the highest-ranking Jewish official in New York City who co-endorsed with Mamdani in the ranked choice primary. Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

(JTA) — Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York mayoral primary puts into sharp relief the political dilemma that faces the broad center of American Jewry.

We want the State of Israel to endure and prosper as a democracy, and we want a United States where tolerance, justice and democracy flourish. As a minority, we need partners to make progress. But partners on some issues are our foes on others.

This is a difficult dilemma, but not as difficult as it seems. There is an opening for a renewed Jewish progressivism that defends Jewish interests as it pursues social justice.

A prevalent misreading of the political scene makes that opening hard to see. As the far left, big-money campaign donors and lazy political reporters all like to describe it, Democrats are split between a monolithic “moderate” establishment and progressive outsiders. Either you give up on social justice, or you fall in line behind anti-Israel activists.

The outcome of last Tuesday’s mayor primary in New York City might seem to support that, but the reality is messier and more promising. While it’s crystal clear that Mamdani is no friend of Israel, that’s not what won him the election. He campaigned and won on economic populism.

Democrats are split over economic populism, in ways that the establishment-outsider dichotomy only obscures. Moderate-labeled legislators like Chris Murphy and Chris DeLuzio have joined with the leader of the Progressive Caucus, Greg Casar, in calling on the party to downplay issues of culture and identity and champion the interests of the many against the super-rich.

As Murphy, DeLuzio and Casar point out, the economic woes that fueled Mamdani’s victory are felt across the country, by voters left and right. Fifty years of growing inequality, declining union membership and deindustrialization have pushed workers out of the middle class. Even for the affluent, housing and health care are getting harder to access and harder to pay for.

In this context, walking away from the historic Jewish commitment to social justice for all is not just morally wrong. It also fails to protect our own interests. As the stunning collapse of Andrew Cuomo’s campaign illustrates, defense of the status quo is a losing political strategy. The Jewish community must rethink its progressivism, not abandon it.

It’s a Jewish tradition to look to our own past when faced with new problems. In the first half of the 20th century, the Jewish social democratic and labor movement developed a distinct political outlook. Their thinking has much to teach us today.

Then as now, democracy was under attack and antisemitism was an immediate threat. In response to those challenges, the movement elaborated three basic doctrines:

- A left coalition organized around common interests in economic fairness, uniting poor and middle class against the economic elite. The union movement is central to that coalition.

- An unwavering commitment to democracy, backed up with outspoken criticism of its enemies on both the right and the far left.

- Jewish solidarity within a broader democratic left.

This is not a laundry list. It is a coherent theory of social progress.

A coalition built around common economic interests is a necessity for redistributing economic wealth and political power. It is also the most effective means of overcoming prejudice and discrimination. Working together toward common goals combats hate more effectively than denunciations and confessions.

For the immigrant generation and their children, achieving economic security and freedom from discrimination was not a “privilege” that needed to be “checked.” It was a right to be enjoyed by poor and middle class alike.

Labor unions were and are central to winning and defending these rights. The New Deal wave of organizing raised workers into the middle class economically and empowered them politically. In the rising industrial unions, the experience of common struggle built alliances across ethnic and racial barriers.

Alongside collective bargaining, economic security is achieved through universal government services like Social Security, public schools and libraries. Social democrats are wary of means-testing. Programs that serve the poor alone, motivated by charity rather than common interest, are at best politically vulnerable. At worst, they undermine the progressive coalition by sowing discord between those at the bottom and those just above them.

Similarly divisive is the now-fashionable concept of “allyship.” Too often, allyship means-tests human rights. Targets of hatred who are insufficiently downtrodden — Jews in particular — are classed among the privileged and not the victims. The duty of the privileged, they are told, is to support the demands issued by the oppressed, not to exercise their own judgment or defend their own interests.

When allyship shuts down debate, the loudest and most extreme voices crowd all others out. The police must be defunded, not made accountable. “Intifada revolution” supplants the two-state solution.

This political pathology is not confined to the far left. In much of the liberal establishment, on campus and elsewhere, a politics of charity (or worse, guilt) prevails. Jews hold privilege, the thinking goes, so their complaints are unworthy of concern — an attitude that jumps out of the sneering text messages exchanged by Columbia University administrators during last year’s campus crisis.

The Jewish labor movement believed in solidarity, a solidarity based not on charity but on shared interests and mutual respect. They never allowed their own voices to be stilled.

Those voices were raised in defense of freedom against its foes on all sides. The Jewish labor movement knew that democracies are the only reliable allies for workers and for Jews. Their rejection of autocrats on the left and right alike can be a model for our time.

Over the last half-century, as Jews grew more affluent and more secure, we came to think of social action as something we do for others. That is no longer tenable after Oct. 7, and not just because our own interests are in need of immediate defense.

Charity-based politics, in both its establishment and ultra-left versions, aims to lift up the very bottom. Under its strict doctrine, the middle gets no help — less needy than those below them, and a threat to the power and wealth above them.

Throughout history, Diaspora Jews have been in the middle, and that is where our community is now. Far from secure, yet mostly affluent, we need solidarity, not charity.

The heritage of the Jewish labor movement points the way to a renewed progressivism that defends freedom and seeks economic fairness for all. A politics of solidarity that brings together the middle class and the disadvantaged would undercut bigotry and legitimate Jewish self-assertion. It would give Jews firm ground to stand on, working with a future Mayor Mamdani when they agree and pushing him when they disagree.

And, as the New York primary teaches, it is a politics that can win elections, keep America free, and make it more equal.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward. Discover more perspectives in Opinion. To contact Opinion authors, email [email protected].

This article was downloaded from https://forward.com/opinion/732718/after-zohran-mamdanis-upset-theres-a-way-forward-for-pro-israel-progressives/ at Jun 28, 2025 at 7:21 PM EDT.

OPINION | JUN 25, 2025, 9:16 PM EDT | UPDATED JUN 26, 2025, 7:42 AM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Pro-Palestinian protesters are suddenly supporting Iran. They might want to talk to some Palestinians

Rob Eshman

No, Israel’s strikes on Iran aren’t morally similar to its war in Gaza

Protesters in Seoul demonstrate against the U.S. attacks on Iran during a protest against in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza on June 22. Photo by Jung Yeon-je / AFP

There’s a photo floating around social media of a blonde woman at an anti-war rally last week in London, wearing a keffiyeh and holding up a photo, as if in solidarity, of the Iranian news anchor who fled her TV studio under Israeli attack.

The woman seems earnest, committed — and delusional. Whom, exactly, does she think she’s helping by taking to the streets to advocate for the essential rights of Iranian state TV?

Ongoing protests against Israel’s presence in Gaza, which even former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has called “indiscriminate, unrestrained and brutal,” are justified. And I understand, too, why a majority of Americans oppose President Donald Trump’s decision to bomb Iran — these things can end badly, and it’s unlikely that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, or its interests abroad.

But what I truly don’t understand is the sloppy morality that conflates legitimate concerns for Palestinian lives with the defense of Iran’s despicable regime.

It is a clear and well-established fact that the Islamic Republic of Iran oppresses and tortures its own people. It underwrote the slaughter of some 500,000 Syrians, helped destroy civil society in Lebanon, and gives substantial funds and support to Hamas, perpetrators of the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel that precipitated the humanitarian tragedy in Gaza.

Now, following Trump’s declaration of a ceasefire between Iran and Israel, the Iranian regime is turning its firepower on its own people.

In one city it arrested 115 people, accusing them of espionage on behalf of Israel. On Monday, it executed a well-known regime critic, Mohammad Amin Mahdavi Shayesteh, charging him with spying for Israel. Unable to defeat the Zionist entity, the regime will now lash out at its own defenseless citizens.

And yet not a few Westerners, in the streets of England, Australia and New York, are rising up to defend it. Many of the 300,000 people who marched against the attack on Iran held up placards featuring the face of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with the words, “Choose the Right Side of History.”

“Western, liberal, ‘woke’ feminists, clueless about the brutal reality in our country, consistently stand with our oppressors under the delusion of saviorism,” Sana Ebrahimi, an Iranian-born doctoral candidate, posted to X in response to the photo. “They have no understanding of the decades of humiliation, violence, and systemic oppression we’ve endured under the Islamic Republic.”

“Well-meaning but misguided progressives in the West have swallowed the Islamic Republic’s propaganda,” the Iranian-born actress Nazanin Boniadi added on her X account. “Millions of Iranians would trade places with you in a heartbeat — while you defend their oppressors.”

For 48 years Iran’s totalitarian regime has tried to position itself as the savior of the Palestinians, a cynical way to commandeer their country’s resources and lock it in a perpetual battle that upholds their repressive rule. A war such like that, in a quote immortalized by the film adaptation of 1984, “is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous.”

That these Western protesters should fall for it, marching for the Islamic Republic as if it has the same moral claims as starving children in Gaza, is especially galling, considering Palestinians themselves want nothing to do with Iran’s so-called support.

Last year, when Khamenei praised the Oct. 7 attacks, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas shot back that the Palestinians “do not need wars that do not serve their ambitions for freedom and independence.”

So let’s review. If Palestinian leaders reject Iran’s murderous meddling, and brave Iranians inside and outside the country oppose the regime’s authoritarian brutality, why exactly are Western protesters chanting and waving placards in support of it?

The kindest possible excuse is that street protests are crude platforms, and “Free Palestine, Stop the Bombing and By the Way Down with the Iranian Regime” is just too much to fit on a poster board.

But that gives these protesters credit they don’t deserve for even a modicum of sophistication. Their logic is simple, and simply misguided: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The same people who shout, “By any means necessary”; refuse to acknowledge the massacres and rapes that took place on Oct. 7, 2023; refuse to call hostages “hostages”; and see Hamas as “freedom fighters” — their twisted moral compass points toward Iran as a liberator, victim and savior.

“Don’t let anybody lie to you and tell you it’s just a minority” of these protesters that see Gaza and Iran as joined in unjust victimhood, Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Gaza-born policy analyst, said last week at an event in Beverly Hills sponsored by the Israel Policy Forum. “It’s mainstream. Some people will be outright pro-Hamas. Some people will say, ‘Well, resistance is justified,’ or ‘Israel doesn’t leave them any choice.’”

Meanwhile, a Gaza mother, who has lost six family members to Israeli bombs, told the Christian Science Monitor that she has no tears left for Iran.

“Iran doesn’t strike Israel for our interest. It does it for their own; no one is doing anything for us,” she said.

Paradoxically, Israel’s strikes against Iran are actually those with the greatest chance of helping Palestinians — because weakening Iran’s leaders and disrupting their military and intelligence networks will weaken their proxy armies, including Hamas, which continues to be brutal toward Palestinians in Gaza even amid Israel’s onslaught.

Which is why, beginning in late May, thousands of Gaza residents started taking to the streets to protest Hamas. This is not a pro-Israel movement. But it reflects the sentiments of a population that has experienced firsthand the death and destruction that Hamas and its funders in Tehran have brought to the strip. I’ve scanned their banners and read the translations of their chants. No one is waving a photo of the ayatollah. And no one is cheering for Iran.

Rob Eshman is a senior columnist for the Forward. For his food writing and recipes subscribe to his Foodaism newsletter.

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The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward. Discover more perspectives in Opinion. To contact Opinion authors, email [email protected].

This article was downloaded from https://forward.com/opinion/732313/iran-pro-palestinian-protesters/ at Jun 28, 2025 at 7:21 PM EDT.

Culture

- Anyone who tells you that you shouldn’t meet your heroes never met Jill Sobule

- She revolutionized the world for LGBTQ Jews, and now she’s ready for a new challenge

MUSIC | JUN 28, 2025, 10:00 AM EDT | UPDATED JUN 28, 2025, 2:16 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Anyone who tells you that you shouldn’t meet your heroes never met Jill Sobule

Rebecca Karpen

Jill Sobule was a Queer Jewish icon, a born entertainer, my mentor and my friend

Jill Sobule performing at City Winery, 2018. Photo by Getty Images

It was 2017 and I was blasting Attic in my friend Veronica’s dorm room. “Do you want to hear a great Anne Frank song?” I asked her.

She rolled her eyes. “You and your World War II crap” she muttered.

On May 1 of this year, I texted Veronica. “The Attic lady died,” I said.

“Who?” Veronica wrote back.

The Attic lady was Queer Jewish icon Jill Sobule. I first heard her music in 2013 when I was a high school sophomore binging Dawson’s Creek, enamored with its soundtrack. Sobule’s song “Somewhere in New Mexico” shattered something in me. I was grieving a close family friend who had died of cancer. With every church vigil, she had grown weaker and I was struggling with my Judaism, which I had always viewed as intrinsically bound to my belief in God, a belief now crumbling. Incapable of communicating the isolation of my worldview that was plunging into freefall, I found companionship in “Somewhere in New Mexico.”

In the track, the loneliness of atheism was on full display. The song begins with Jill mocking her friend for believing she saw Jesus only to admit she is probably worse off for her cynicism than her friend is for her blind faith. She glares at a young couple holding hands while a former partner reminds her she never had faith in anything, even love. She begs for statues of the Virgin Mary to cry, she begs for alien abduction, she begs for a miracle. She never gets it. I’d never heard someone discuss the hard parts of losing faith with the honesty and irreverence that Jill did. “She’s a genius,” I thought.

Since I was 5, I’d tried to write songs, but struggled to find my own voice. I felt scared to speak, even though I was screaming inside. My horrible anxiety bred a perpetual dissonance between what I wanted to say, and what I was able to, but Jill’s work empowered me to start writing music about this experience. The result, “Stop, You’re Overthinking It,” was long and somber, but it was also the first original song I performed live and the first song I was ever proud of. Being a human is messy, and when it comes to art, most of what I had been exposed to sanitized the experience of feeling. My  music had been confined to aping what I thought people wanted to hear, and seeing nothing of myself in the final product.

Jill didn’t just say the quiet part out loud, she bellowed it, over and over and over again. She wasn’t afraid to put a Holocaust joke in a satirical song about suicidal ideation. With “I Kissed a Girl” in 1995, she became the first artist to have an openly queer song break the Billboard Top 20. She wrote about how mood stabilizers obliterated sex drives. She was funny and unapologetic. She was also hauntingly sincere and created the most human art I had ever encountered. In the weirdness between all the things we’re supposed to feel and the things we actually do, I saw a reflection of my own emotions in music for the first time. I started writing honestly, going for the weird or clichéd line without fear of judgment. I learned to take up space, to advocate for myself, to be honest about what I wanted and what I deserved in the real, non-singing world.

‘These are the moments that stick with you’

The author, Rebecca Karpen. Photo by Maria Pava

In 2015, I sent Jill a Facebook message: “Hey can I cover ‘Somewhere In New Mexico’, it means the world to me.” She replied a few weeks later: Sure! Please send me the cover when you’re done!” and apologized for the delay. I thought, “maybe this could be the start of a mentorship!” Feeling giddy, I mentioned I had a show coming up and asked if she’d like to attend. She left me on read. Mortified, I hit refresh for weeks. It became my own private Idaho of parasocial shame.

Every time I listened to her, I panicked at the prospect of having embarrassed myself. I felt terrified of going to her concerts or engaging too closely. As I watched her open for Bernie Sanders and streamed her TED Talk with Al Gore, I wished I had kept this door closed.

I kept writing, though. I learned guitar, performed around the city, and released music. With every chord I played and line I wrote, I started becoming a little bit more myself. Whenever anyone asked who inspired my music, I would say “oh Billy Joel, Taylor Swift, Jill Sobule…”

In the middle of the global pandemic, I moved to Austria. I’d kept following Jill’s work, the release of her 2018 album, Nostalgia Kills, nearby touring dates, and when I saw an email subject line that said “Zoom Songwriting Classes with Jill,” I opened up my wallet and paid for the course, expecting a complimentary heart attack. “She’s my biggest inspiration and I can’t just not do it, right?” I asked myself.

The class began at 2:30 a.m. Austria time. “I’m Rebecca,” I said when Jill asked us to introduce ourselves. “It’s 2:30 in the morning now so I’m sorry if I’m whispering but I don’t want to get evicted.”

Jill played “Strawberry Gloss” about being a preteen and realizing she had a crush on a female friend. The assignment she gave us for the next class was to  write about an unrequited middle school crush.

I felt uneasy. My long-bubbling shame had morphed into something more terrifying — the fear that now that I had her attention and was in her orbit, I was going to blow it.

Still, I let myself remember eighth grade. I’d met a girl and we’d become fast friends. She was cooler than me, aloof and gorgeous. She’d keep me up until the early hours of the morning, telling me I was the only person who understood her. Even so, she ignored me during school and never invited me to hang out with her friends. She called me obsessive, said everyone made fun of me behind my back, that I needed to disappear. I spent years wondering why she had hurt me so badly, and I realized the answer: I had feelings for her. She had broken my heart. It was a wound I had never shared with anyone outside of my notes app. The lyrics of “Strawberry Gloss” orbited around my brain:

It was a terrible time, and no one explained

Everyone suffers, and let me just say

Some had it worse and some feel a loss

Here I am waiting for you

In strawberry gloss.

In the next class, I volunteered to go first. “Um, this song,” I said, “I wrote it a while back but I finished it this week and it’s kinda about like a high school crush but I guess it started in middle school and I don’t know, I’m going to play it now.” Then I did.

When I was done, Jill was the first one to speak. “Rebecca, that was incredible. Beautiful work, beautiful, beautiful work,” she said.

“I felt strange about how much of a hold this relationship had on me for so long, like I was just a kid and nothing happened, but I don’t know — it hurt, I guess,” I muttered, uncomfortable with the praise, not sure if I believed it.

“Hey, Rebecca,” she said. “Listen, I’m pushing 60 and most of the things I write about are stuff like middle school crushes. Those are the moments that stick with you, that make you. It’s also the type of thing that sticks with other people and you should be so proud of the work you made today.”

For the first time, I felt comfortable around Jill. I had cast this nice lady as the face of my insecurities because of a Facebook message from 5 years earlier. I started laughing.

“It is funny, right Rebecca?” Jill said. “The things that stick with us?”

I nodded.

She stopped being a goddess and started becoming Jill

I followed every prompt she gave. I asked her about the songs she’d written, the ones that soundtracked my life, and she addressed every question I had with patience, humor and kindness. “‘Somewhere in New Mexico’ is my favorite song,” I said a few weeks later.

“Always liked that one,” Jill mused. “Y’know, it makes me think about QAnon.”

I stared at her. “Really?”

Jill chuckled. “Yeah, they’re freaks but they’re freaks who believe in something, and it sounds stupid, but part of me is envious of them.”

Jill Sobule performing at a Bernie Sanders event. Photo by Getty Images

Her openness triggered an openness in my own songwriting. A prompt Jill gave about unrequited love became the first song I ever wrote about my father’s Parkinson’s — how watching my mother care for him altered my perceptions of what love should be. I started writing about my family, my trust issues, my fear of failure. In the weirdness between all the things I’m supposed to feel and the things I actually do, I gave myself permission to exist for the first time, in all my messiness, in all my creativity, in all my humanity.

One class, the theme was “Flintstones.” It seemed stupid at first, but Jill was able to make a masterpiece out of anything and I would’ve followed that woman into the sun, so of course I worked my ass off on it. I came in with a forlorn ballad about Wilma Flintstone realizing she’s sentient and trapped in a cartoon. In between wistful lyrics about Lillith and Pepsi, I sang the saddest “yabba dabba doo” for the bridge.

Jill lost it.

“REBECCAAAAAA!” she screamed. “Honestly, genius. I’m not just saying that. And that bridge, it’s genius, so so so so f-ing stupid, but genius.”

By now, she had become a peer and a mentor. She would space out and forget things, hesitate before playing new pieces for us. I couldn’t believe someone like her still experienced anxiety. She was a trailblazer, but undoubtedly human. As I watched her make jokes about her upcoming brain surgery, I stopped seeing her as a goddess, I just saw her as Jill.

Right before the last session, I wrote Jill an email. My stomach clenched a little bit, remembering what happened last time I sent her a message when I felt vulnerable. “It’s different now,” I reminded myself. “She knows you, Rebecca. She sees you, she’s proud of you.”

I wrote about how much her music had always meant to me, how it had allowed me to find myself, to appreciate what made my music different, rather than bully myself over the fact it didn’t mesh with what everyone else made. I wrote that I was nervous as anything to study with her but so glad that I had, that it was wonderful, and I was so thankful that she had given me this space and helped me to figure out who I am.

I pressed send.

Jill replied five days later;

“Rebecca, Your letter is beautiful and means so much to me.

It was such a pleasure and honor having you in the class.

I hope you can make the next classes too.

Your presence would be so so welcome.

Xo, Jill”

For years, I continued studying with Jill and updated her on what I was working on. We only met in person once, at a show at City Winery on July 15th, 2021. When she saw me, she ran up and hugged me. “My genius!” she exclaimed. She wrote the same thing on my t-shirt. Someone took a picture of us together, but I was never able to figure out who it was and I was never able to actually get it. “Please let me know if you’re playing a show anytime soon, I’d love to come if I’m in town,” she’d tell me. But we kept just missing each other.

Who the attic lady was

I learned she died from a Stereogum Instagram post. I searched “Jill Sobule House Fire” again and again hoping for a retraction. Needing a retraction.

I looked at the text my friend Veronica had sent me after I told her the “Attic Lady” had died.

“Who?” she had asked.

Who?

I watched the text bubble on my phone triple in size while my memories of Jill burst out of me and onto the keyboard.

Who?

Sobule performing during Concert For America in Los Angeles, 2025. Photo by Getty Images

The Attic lady was my friend Jill who wrote the music for the Nickelodeon show Unfabulous and soundtracked the makeover scene in Clueless; who was one of the first people to make a record that was entirely crowdfunded, reinventing the DIY album model; who was an activist, critiquing the politics of the Christian far right with brilliance in 1997; who celebrated the intersection between Judaism and queerness; who created a staging of Yentl as a transgender story. She was a Drama Desk nominee and a born entertainer. She was a neurotic queer Jewish woman who celebrated every ounce of who she was. The world is a sadder place for losing her, but a better place for having had her.

As I sat there crushed, I did what I’d always done when I felt low, I put on Jill’s music. And I laughed. I laughed at her asking a non-Jewish lover “would you have hidden me in your attic?” I laughed at her complaining that she hates when people in entertainment call it “the industry” and whenever she hears that, she responds, “Oh are you in steel?” I laughed while she remarked “Dylan was so mean to Donovan in that movie.” I’d forgotten how much joy she spread in her work and reflected on how blessed I am that she left so much of that joy in the world even though she’s no longer around to celebrate it with us.

Jill was my champion, she was and still is everything I hope I can be in this world: bright and caring and strong and passionate. I can’t believe I almost let myself miss out on forming a connection with her because of a Facebook message. I’m so glad that I didn’t. I love you Jill. Thank you for everything. You’ll always be my genius.

Of late, one of her lyrics I have been returning to is “we have to keep moving or die.” I will, Jill — I promise you.

Rebecca Karpen is an NYC-based singer-songwriter currently pursuing an MA in Politics at New York University. Her writing has appeared in Hey Alma, Inequality.org, and PopMatters, and she has presented research on populism, songwriting, and pop culture at conferences across the United States and Austria. Her music is available on all streaming platforms and at rebeccakarpenexists.bandcamp.com. Follow her on Instagram @rebeccakarpenexists.

This article was downloaded from https://forward.com/culture/music/730918/jill-sobule-remembrance-songwriting-queer-jewish-icon-rebecca-karpen-essay/ at Jun 28, 2025 at 7:21 PM EDT.

CULTURE | JUN 26, 2025, 12:52 PM EDT | UPDATED JUN 27, 2025, 10:27 AM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

She revolutionized the world for LGBTQ Jews, and now she’s ready for a new challenge

Abigail Pogrebin

After expanding Keshet into a multimillion-dollar juggernaut, Idit Klein is stepping aside

Idit Klein speaking at an event in 2012. Courtesy of Idit Klein

When Alyx Bernstein was in 8th grade and came out to her parents as trans, she told them that despite her deep religious upbringing in synagogue and day school, she felt totally disconnected from Jewish life.

Her path changed completely in 2016 when she attended one youth Shabbaton — a Sabbath retreat — organized by Keshet, an organization whose moniker is: “For LGBTQ Equality in Jewish Life.” For the first time, Alyx felt she had found her Jewish people and her Jewish home.

“I experienced the total 180 of ‘Oh my gosh — actually there is a religious Jewish life which is LGBTQ affirming, inclusive, celebratory, and people can go to an LGBTQ Shabbaton and read Torah and daven together.’ It was the first time I’d been to Saturday morning services in years. I had a tremendous time.”

In addition to Keshet’s Shabbat retreats around the country — with prayer, study, singing, and socializing for Jewish LGBTQ youth — the organization lobbies Congress and the courts on behalf of LGBTQ rights, conducts training sessions for clergy and lay leaders working in synagogues, day schools, Jewish summer camps and Hillels. Keshet has often been the proverbial hotline for Jewish institutions navigating unfamiliar territory, and offers concrete suggestions for how to make LGBTQ Jews feel not just accepted, but integral.

Klein with Joe and Jill Biden, Sept. 24, 2013. Photo by Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)

Today this organization is at a key inflection point, thanks to the imminent retirement of its president and CEO, Idit Klein — the straight-talking, wide-smiling, energetic leader who says she feels ready to pass the baton, as she weighs other opportunities in justice work, possibly related to Israel.

“There’s a Jewish concept, kol d’mama daka, the ‘still small voice,’” Klein told me over Zoom. “Very profoundly, a still small voice was telling me, ‘It’s time for your next chapter.’ There really was no thinking or analysis beyond that.”

As Klein prepares to step aside on July 31, I asked her to reflect back on the organization she built and where its hurdles remain.

“Nowadays most of the Jewish communities we work with start out in a place of tolerance, and sometimes are very happy about that,” she said. “But they need to be reminded that no one wants to be ‘tolerated’ in their home. The crux of our work has always been about revealing to the broader Jewish community the extent to which LGBTQ Jews have felt — and many continue to feel — a sense of exclusion and alienation and isolation in their Jewish communities, including in liberal Jewish communities.”

Klein has seen, especially during the two Trump administrations, some synagogue leadership advising staff to take down the Keshet “safe space” stickers or not to include pronouns on name tags or Zoom identifiers because, some contend, “it can be polarizing.” But despite instances of what she considers backsliding, Klein is focused on how far Jewish institutions have come — hiring openly gay clergy, adding LGBTQ-focused programming and advocacy, participating in Pride Month, rethinking terminology in sermons, newsletters, and social media statements.

Keshet was the brainchild of two Jewish men, Jonathan Krasner and Jared Goldfarb, who co-founded it as an all-volunteer grassroots group in 1996, then handed it over to Klein in 2001. She built an initial budget of $42,000 – more than half given by Combined Jewish Philanthropies in Boston — which has now grown to $6.4 million and a team of 35, based in six city hubs: New York, Boston, Miami, Chicago, Texas and San Francisco.

“Saying LGBTQ people have a place in a rabbi’s responsibility was revolutionary,” said Rabbi Menachem Creditor, Scholar-in-Residence at UJA Federation of New York. “I had been ordained a year before Idit started at Keshet and had not thought of myself as responsible for this conversation.”

Klein in Keshet’s early days. Courtesy of Idit Klein

“We did a workshop with Keshet,” recalled David Rittberg, who met Klein in 2011 when he was executive director of NYU HIllel. “I remember thinking, ‘I’m an inclusive guy, it’s an inclusive organization, we have our act together on this.’ And then, of course, I learned throughout the process that we weren’t as good as we thought.”’

Rittberg, now Senior Director at Schusterman Family Philanthropies, which has been funding Keshet for 20 years, said Keshet remains as necessary as ever. “I think this work is never done. It just requires constant care, openness and training,” he said.

New York Judge Seth Marnin, who served on Keshet’s board of directors and recently became the first openly transgender male judge in the United States, met Idit Klein back in 2013 when he was working on marriage equality cases for the ADL and Keshet actively supported their amicus briefs. “She’s courageous,” Marnin said of Klein. “It’s challenging to talk to people who do not believe in your humanity”

A Yale graduate, Klein received a Master’s in Education from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a concentration on social justice and anti-oppression education. A grandchild of four Holocaust survivors, Klein told me she still carries an intense childhood awareness of how her family persevered. Their story seeded her belief in defiant optimism. In a 2020 essay for this publication, Klein recounted what a friend told her about her positivity: “‘It’s like you see a glass with a single drop in it and somehow you immediately are able to imagine that glass entirely full.”

That sanguinity has clearly steered Klein’s approach to post-Oct. 7 strains within the LGBTQ and Jewish community. Many gay, lesbian and trans Jews have felt exiled from LGBTQ meetings, social gatherings, organizations, and even protests and parades — because they’re expected to check their Zionism at the door.

“LGBTQ Jews feel shunned by the Jewish community and the LGBTQ community right now,” Klein acknowledged. “I understand the pain and sense of betrayal and I certainly experienced that personally. There were quite a few LGBTQ organizations that put out statements after October 7 that we found challenging.” She declined to name the one that was especially difficult, because she ended up having a fruitful discussion with its chief.

Klein meeting Barack Obama. Courtesy of Idit Klein

“We met for over three hours, and she asked me questions about Jewish history that led me to say, ‘I need to start in 586 BCE. I did my best to provide 2,500 years of Jewish history,’ Klein recalled. “And our conversation was possible because there was a relationship — trust — already there, so she was open to hearing my perspective. That led to her making a commitment, at the end of the conversation, that they would not use the language that we identified as problematic again.”

I asked Klein about the confusion many non-LGBTQ Jews have expressed as they witness members of the gay/trans community support Hamas, which is ruthlessly and violently intolerant of homosexuality.

“I can understand that response,” Klein said. “But what I know to be true is that most of the people I know, who are marching with a critique of Israeli government policy, calling for the war to end, calling for the liberation of Palestine, are doing so from a deeply humanitarian place of seeing people who are suffering and wanting to speak up as Jews in response to that. I haven’t done a lot of talking with the people who are walking around with red triangles or other Hamas imagery.”

I told Klein her comments suggest a bottomless patience. “I wouldn’t say bottomless,” Klein corrected me with a smile. “It is painful, and there are moments when I’m stopped in my tracks. But I just can’t stay there. I can’t surrender to believing that this person is lost and will forever be my enemy. It’s just not how I’m oriented.”

It’s this outlook that makes her certain Keshet will not falter without her now, despite the current headwinds of anti-LGBTQ policies and legislation. “I couldn’t have more confidence in the person taking my place,” she said of Jaimie Krass, Keshet’s Director of Youth Programs, who was the unanimous pick – announced last Friday — of Keshet’s search committee, which included Alyx Bernstein.

“So many people who I am still in touch with from the Shabbotonim are in the Jewish professional world now,” Bernstein, now 24, said. “They’re working in federations, Keshet, education, and the Rabbinate.” She herself got dual degrees from Barnard College and the Jewish Theological Seminary, and is entering Hebrew College rabbinical school this fall.

“I was always encouraged by Idit, by Keshet to be myself, to tell my story. It totally transformed me. I don’t think that ever would have happened if, when I was 15 years old, I hadn’t gone to that Shabbaton.”

Abigail Pogrebin has become a rare voice among American Jews, as a journalist and an explorer who shares with refreshing wit and candor her path to finding a meaningful Jewish life.

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This article was downloaded from https://forward.com/culture/731272/idit-klein-leaving-keshet-lgbtq-jews-jamie-krass/ at Jun 28, 2025 at 7:21 PM EDT.

Table of Contents

The Forward: 2025 Jun 28

News

For this Persian Jewish casino magnate in Nevada, Israel is part of the deal

Amid record fundraising, ADL lays off staff to consolidate focus on antisemitism

Pick-and-deli-roll? Brooklyn Nets draft Jewish duo in an NBA first

Opinions

After Zohran Mamdani’s upset, there’s a way forward for pro-Israel progressives

Pro-Palestinian protesters are suddenly supporting Iran. They might want to talk to some Palestinians

Culture

Anyone who tells you that you shouldn’t meet your heroes never met Jill Sobule

She revolutionized the world for LGBTQ Jews, and now she’s ready for a new challenge