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- How a Persian Jewish immigrant became the rodeo king of California

- How the push to unionize at Breads Bakery became a debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

- Black and Jewish people were allies once. Can they be again?

- Why is AIPAC targeting Trump’s ICE funding?

NEWS | JAN 21, 2026, 6:31 AM EST | UPDATED JAN 21, 2026, 10:12 AM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

How a Persian Jewish immigrant became the rodeo king of California

Benyamin Cohen

David Halimi runs rodeos, restaurants and a Western wear empire — while anchoring Jewish life in a small California town

David Halimi in Diamond W Western Wear, the store he runs in Chico, California. Photo by Benyamin Cohen

CHICO, Calif. — David Halimi grew up Jewish in Tehran, watching Bonanza. He now produces rodeos in Northern California and owns a bar modeled on Cheers.

At 73, Halimi is known around Chico as the man behind a Western wear store stocked with thousands of cowboy boots, a rodeo circuit that draws bull riders from across the region, and a U-shaped bar where locals joke about who might be the town’s version of Norm. Less obvious — but no less central — is that he is also a longtime synagogue president, a Hillel board leader, and a professor who teaches business analytics at the local university.

Asked how an Iranian Jew learned the rhythms of the American West, Halimi doesn’t mystify it. “I’m a quick learner,” he said.

Halimi still follows events in Iran closely. “It’s heartbreaking,” he said. “It’s my heritage.” He has no illusions about the imbalance of power. “People protesting with their bare hands are no match to machine guns and professional assassins.” Still, he allows himself hope. “I wish and I pray that the people will prevail.”

For Halimi, the distance between Iran and Chico is not just geographic. It is the distance between a life shaped by instability — he grew up in Iran in the aftermath of a coup — and one he has spent decades deliberately building.

On a recent afternoon inside the 6,000-square-foot Diamond W Western Wear, Halimi wore what he sells — black alligator boots, jeans, a button-down, blazer and a hat — and moved easily past towers of boots, glass cases of belt buckles, pausing as an employee steamed a cowboy hat back into shape. His wife, Fran, emerged from the back. Customers drifted in.

Over the years, his footprint downtown has expanded to include two restaurants and a soon-to-open coffee shop, all within walking distance of his store.

David Halimi outside his Western wear store in Chico, California. Photo by Benyamin Cohen

Halimi didn’t arrive in America looking for a job. He arrived looking for an opportunity. When he moved to the United States at 16, in 1969, he worked full time while going to school, bussing tables at a restaurant and saving aggressively. By 18, he had pooled his earnings with his older brother to make his first real estate investment. “I was never looking for a job,” he said. “I always wanted to do my own thing.”

That instinct carried him through college, where he studied mathematics and economics, and later into commodities trading — “the stock market on steroids,” as he put it — before settling in Chico in 1979. It had the virtues he was looking for: a small-town feel, a university’s energy, and room to build.

Mending fences, building community

For all the boots, buckles and bull riders, Halimi’s most consequential work happens closer to home. He has served on the board of Congregation Beth Israel of Chico for decades, including numerous stints as president, and has been a steady presence through the cycles that define small Jewish communities.

Rabbi Lisa Rappaport, who leads the congregation, said that constancy matters. In a community with limited resources, leadership often means stepping in wherever the need arises.

That was especially true after the synagogue was targeted with antisemitic graffiti in late 2022. What followed, Rappaport recalled, was an outpouring of support. Donations funded a new security system. A local metalworker volunteered to create a new sign. Another family, moved by the response, offered to pay for a fence.

Halimi volunteered to design and help build it. Vertical bars, he insisted, would make the synagogue feel like a jail. Instead, he created diagonal metal panels inspired by math’s golden ratio, incorporating stainless-steel symbols of the Twelve Tribes — a boundary meant to protect without closing the place off.

The fence at Congregation Beth Israel of Chico was designed by David Halimi. Photo by Benyamin Cohen

Rappaport credits both Halimi and his wife, a former religious school director and longtime sisterhood leader, with helping sustain the shul. “They’re in it till the end,” she said. In a small community, she added, that kind of commitment is existential. “If you have a couple of people who have that frame of mind,” she said, “it keeps the community alive. It’s people like that that keep it pulsing.”

Halimi, now a grandfather, carries that same lesson into his classroom at Chico State, where he has been teaching since 2009. Each semester he leads two courses: business analytics and the evolution of management theory. He doesn’t think of it as a job so much as a responsibility. “I like seeing the light bulb go on,” he said. Former students, now entrepreneurs themselves, sometimes track him down to say thank you. The payoff, he said, is “psychic income.”

Halimi teaches what he learned: “Even when the odds are against you,” he said, “you can still succeed.”

His rodeo business began, improbably enough, as a marketing complaint. Halimi had been sponsoring country concerts and rodeos to promote the store, but he was unimpressed with the results. Other sponsors, he noticed, felt the same way. So he launched his own production company. First, they hosted country music concerts. Soon, they built a rodeo: the National Bullriding Championship Tour, which just marked its 30th year.

He had expected resistance from the industry. Instead, he found acceptance, and eventually respect. “It’s very unusual,” he acknowledged, “for an Iranian Jew to be a successful rodeo producer.”

Benyamin Cohen is a senior writer at the Forward and host of our morning briefing, Forwarding the News. He is the author of two books, My Jesus Year and The Einstein Effect.

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This article was downloaded from https://forward.com/news/799020/david-halimi-iran-jewish-chico-western/ at Jan 21, 2026 at 11:22 AM EST.

NEWS | JAN 20, 2026, 12:39 PM EST | UPDATED JAN 20, 2026, 3:21 PM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

How the push to unionize at Breads Bakery became a debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Andrew Silverstein

Global politics have been injected into a discussion of labor grievances at Breads — not everyone is happy about it

A view of a Breads Bakery display at the New York City Food & Wine Festival. Photo by Monica Schipper/Getty Images for NYCWFF

When Ellie, a barista for Breads Bakery, learned that some of her co-workers were forming a labor union, she was interested. The 24-year-old, Brooklyn-based artist who has worked at the Israeli-owned bakery for less than a year, thought it could lead to increased pay and benefits. And she believed her employers could afford it; they regularly sell out of their $18 babkas at their seven different New York locations.

“It started out about wages and conditions,” said Ellie, who, like many of the people I spoke with, asked to be quoted anonymously or with a pseudonym, “but it’s turned into Israel/Palestine.”

At the start of the new year, 30% of the 275 employees had signed union authorization cards for the United Auto Workers Local 2179, the percentage necessary to petition the National Labor Relations Board for a union election. Calling itself “Breaking Breads,” the group put out a press release, stating, “Workers are demanding a living wage, safe workplace, and basic respect.”

But beyond discussing cost-of-living issues and what was portrayed as management’s discriminatory practices, the press release included a demand “to cease Breads’ support for the genocide in Gaza.”

New Yorkers are generally supportive of workers’ campaigns. But in this case, after news of the demands was published in the press, there were lines outside of Breads’ locations to purchase babkas and challahs in support of management. The workers’ refusal to “participate in Zionist projects” like painting Israeli flags on cookies, was interpreted by many as demanding the Israeli bakery stop being Israeli.

Louis Putman, a 62-year-old delivery driver who has worked for Breads for six years, was surprised by his co-workers’ demands. “I’m not political like that,” said the Brooklyn native after he had parked his truck outside the bakery’s Union Square flagship. Putman told me he supports unionization — in the past he was a member of the powerful Service Employees Industry Union — but thinks the campaign shouldn’t focus on the owners’ politics. “They have their views and I have mine,” he said.

Customers have rallied to support Breads Bakery, an Israeli-owned business. Photo by Andrew Silverstein

Eric Milner, a labor attorney whose firm represents unions in the New York area, said that while unions often support political causes, making political demands of an employer is unusual and unlikely to succeed. “A union can’t legitimately tell the boss what products they can or can’t sell, or who they can sell to,” he said. “That’s a core business decision, not a term or condition of employment.”

But organizers say these issues are linked. “We see our struggles for fair pay, respect, and safety as connected to struggles against genocide and forces of exploitation around the world,” Leah A., a worker whom the union says was illegally fired for organizing, said in the press release.

This isn’t the first time that Local 2179 has injected Gaza into their organizing. Last winter, members in the midst of negotiating their first contract with Alamo Drafthouse movie theaters petitioned the cinema to cancel the movie September 5, about the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics, which they called “Zionist propaganda.”

Johannah King-Slutzky, an official of a different UAW local and a student leader of Columbia University’s 2024 campus encampments, is acting as a media contact for Breaking Breads. While her name does not appear on the press release, I received it from her personal Gmail; she is also listed as the owner of photos linked from Google Drive in the release, and her phone number is the contact.

A Palestinian flag is displayed outside the entrance to Hamilton Hall on the campus of Columbia University on April 30, 2024. Photo by Mary Altaffer-Pool/Getty Images

King-Slutzky and Local 2179 declined to comment or clarify her role in the union drive. The doctoral candidate in English and comparative literature is a sergeant-at-arms for Student Workers of Columbia, a local of UAW, which represents the school’s teaching assistants, instructors and researchers. In 2024, she was arrested at the campus encampment and subsequently suspended. She also acted as a spokesperson for the dozens of students who occupied Hamilton Hall.

Ellie, the barista, identifies as pro-Palestinian but says she regrets that more attention hasn’t been given to the other issues. The company’s recent job listings for both the front and back of the house start at the city’s minimum wage of $17 while the union says the business’ revenue is more than $30 million a year. Employees complain of unpredictable schedules, and the union says a worker was hospitalized after an unsecured locker fell on them. The union also says that management has prohibited workers from playing Spanish-language music and speaking in Arabic, which, if true, would be a violation of anti-discrimination law.

Neither Breads’ owners nor their representatives responded to requests for comment on these and other issues.

Both workers and a manager told me that the company told them not to discuss the union while on the clock, something Milner says would most likely be a violation of the National Labor Relations Act and could have a chilling effect. Off the clock, workers were hesitant to discuss the topic with me even anonymously, though several told me they support the union and consider themselves pro-Palestinian.

After two years of Israel’s aggressive response to the Hamas attack, for the first time a majority of Americans have an unfavorable view of Israel. Many of Breads’ workers are in their 20s, a cohort far more likely to view Israel’s military campaign as a genocide. A New York Times/Siena poll found adults under 30 are three times more likely to sympathize with Palestinians than Israelis. For young workers at businesses that have publicly supported Israel, that creates an uncomfortable position.

One counter worker, who also asked not to be named, said her differences with the bosses over Israel didn’t affect her work, until pro-Israel customers began confronting employees after the news of the union drive broke. “One woman came in and ordered a cappuccino,” she said. “I asked if I could get her anything else and she said, ‘Yeah, I’d like that with a side of Zionism.'”

Breads is a spinoff of the popular Tel Aviv bakery Lehanim, and is operated by Israeli-Americans — Chief Executive Yonatan Floman and owner Gadi Peleg. After its opening in 2013, the bakery set off a babka boom and has since become known for its festive challahs, rugelach, and Hanukkah sufganiyot. After the Hamas Oct. 7 attack, locations sold heart-shaped challahs as a fundraiser for Magen David Adom, the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross. Otherwise, while the bakery is identifiably Jewish and Israeli, it does not regularly display flags or political messages.

“We make babka, we don’t engage in politics,” the bakery said in a statement on Jan. 14. “We celebrate peace and embrace people of all cultures and beliefs. We’ve always been a workplace where people of all backgrounds and viewpoints can come together around a shared purpose, the joy found at a bakery, and we find it troubling that divisive political issues are being introduced into our workplace.”

But some may find the philanthropy of the bakery’s leadership difficult to separate from supporting Israel’s actions in Gaza. Floman and Breads Bakery are listed as sponsors of an October 2024 fundraising gala on the Facebook page of American Friends of Unit 669, which supports the elite Israeli Air Force’s combat search and rescue unit that extracts downed pilots and other soldiers in distress behind enemy lines. Peleg actively supports and previously served as a committee chair for American Friends of Rabin Medical Center, which raises funds for an Israeli hospital that, in addition to civilian care, treats soldiers wounded in combat. Neither cause is unusual among pro-Israel Jewish Americans, but for some who view the Gaza campaign as a genocide, even well-intended support of Israel is unacceptable.

The Breaking Breads campaign reflects a split within the UAW. Graduate students now account for a quarter of the union’s membership, and Region 9a, which includes Local 2179 and represents workers at Columbia, Harvard and other elite universities, has become a base for pro-Palestinian activists. In 2023, members from the northeast formed UAW Labor for Palestine, pushing the union to cut ties with Israeli unions and divest over $400,000 in Israeli bonds. The national leadership has resisted. When the UAW endorsed President Joe Biden in 2024, King-Slutzky and other activists disrupted his UAW convention speech with chants of “Ceasefire now!” and were dragged off the floor.

Not every Breads worker is galvanized by Gaza. Two Ecuadorian workers who don’t speak English told me that other Latin American co-workers had talked with them about the union, but the Middle East conflict was never mentioned. Ellie doesn’t think it’s a union issue. “I’ve worked for evil corporations,” she said. “You never know where the money goes.” In her months on the job, she hasn’t been asked to do anything that may directly support Israel.

“Once you start bringing in politics that divide people, you’re taking away from what you’re actually trying to do, which is to unify the workforce and get better wages,” said Milner. He believes it will also make it harder to gain the support of customers.

Still, for some workers, even if a union contract can’t change their bosses’ politics, they think it’s worth taking a stand and making a statement.

“I support the Union efforts and I support Palestine,” the counter worker I spoke to about tensions between staff and customers texted me. “I also know that the owners’ support of Israel is deeply rooted and pretty unlikely to budge.”

Andrew Silverstein is a New York-based freelance writer and the co-founder of Streetwise New York Tours. In 2023, he was named “Best Freelancer of the Year” by the American Jewish Press Association.

This article was downloaded from https://forward.com/news/798696/breads-bakery-labor-union-israel-palestine/ at Jan 21, 2026 at 11:22 AM EST.

NEWS | JAN 19, 2026, 6:00 AM EST | UPDATED JAN 19, 2026, 12:54 PM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Black and Jewish people were allies once. Can they be again?

Andrea Cooper

Initiatives are springing up across the country to bring together Blacks and Jews, including one from CNN commentator Van Jones

Participants at the Rekindle Fellowship Exodus Over Dinner program in December. Courtesy of Rekindle Fellowship

The Rekindle graduates laugh, clap their hands, and twirl to “Hava Nagila.” They are Black and white, Jewish, Christian, and agnostic.

It’s the sort of scene that Matt Fieldman, a white Jew, and Charmaine Rice, a Black Christian, envisioned when they launched Rekindle in Cleveland in 2021. The organization, now with 20 chapters nationally and six more in development, aims to revitalize Black-Jewish relations in the U.S. and help rebuild the groups’ historic connections.

Other initiatives share similar goals. Exodus Leadership Forum from CNN commentator Van Jones brings together Black, Jewish, and Black-Jewish leaders over dinner in multiple cities for “nights of deep conversation” and “a space to share history, confront hard truths and imagine a shared future,” according to a promotional video. The organization anticipates holding more than 300 dinners this year in partnership with community groups, Jones told the Forward.

Hillel International, the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, and UNCF (formerly the United Negro College Fund) are hosting Unity Dinners with speakers and dialogue for students on college campuses in 14 cities. Additional efforts include local groups for teens or adults, such as Challah and Soul in Los Angeles and the Charlotte Black/Jewish Alliance in North Carolina.

For some, nothing less than democracy is at stake. “I think the most powerful alliance for good in the history of Western civilization is Blacks and Jews together,” said Jones, who is Black.

Rekindle held an Exodus Over Dinner event in December. Courtesy of Rekindle Fellowship

Advocates point to rising rates of antisemitism and more than 3,000 hate crimes committed against African Americans in 2024. Blacks and Jews were effective allies for social change during the civil rights era and can be again, the thinking goes, even amid such painful obstacles as the turmoil in Gaza.

“There were relationships that were hurt as a result of the war, but we still have to continue to work as hard as we can to heal them,” said Rabbi Judy Schindler, executive director of Spill the Honey, which creates films, educational curricula for students, and workshops to help “the Black-Jewish alliance today” fight antisemitism and racism. “There’s just too much work to do right here,” said Schindler, who is white.

How bridges are being rebuilt

Movement leaders point to the need for education as a foundation for reconnection and action today. Jews were among the NAACP’s founders in 1909. Soon after, Julius Rosenwald joined Booker T. Washington to build thousands of schools for Black students. During World War II, Black soldiers fought Nazism, while Black colleges and universities offered faculty positions to Jewish academics fleeing Europe. In the civil rights era, “the room where it happened” was in the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, where leaders drafted the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Black and Jewish people have an historic alliance, said Shonda Isom Walkovitz, the Black Jewish co-founder of Challah and Soul. “It’s in both our DNAs what we have experienced, not only across Europe but in the United States. It was ‘no Blacks, no Jews, no dogs,’” she said.

Van Jones with participants at an Exodus Over Dinner event with the Black-Jewish Entertainment Alliance. Courtesy of Exodus Leadership Forum

Still, historical understanding is just a start, those involved in this work said. Renewing the alliance requires opportunities for moderated, honest conversations to see where the groups’ current values, experiences and priorities intersect locally and nationally.

People need to build relationships and trust, said Fieldman, before allyship can happen. The five-session Rekindle curriculum, with an optional sixth session on Israel, is designed to deepen knowledge of each community while providing a place for questions and dialogue. Among the topics: Who benefits from the Black and Jewish communities not getting along?

“People are hungry for a space to have meaningful conversations,” Fieldman said. “They want to get off social media, and they want to have a space where they can’t be canceled or have negative ramifications of asking a question or talking honestly about their opinions.”

Jones has seen the same need at the Exodus dinners, where people enter cautiously but once “you break the seal and let people speak about their own personal experiences, not politics, not geopolitical events, but our own experiences as Jewish people, as Black people, as people who might be both Black and Jewish, the heart opens up,” he said.

Meaningful experiences are key. Rekindle participants can join each other for Shabbat dinners, church services, arts and cultural events, and holiday celebrations, including Juneteenth. Friendships have led to joint projects, such as joining a community clean-up hosted by local churches.

In Los Angeles, Challah and Soul hosted a Soulful Seder last year which attracted 150 guests. Organizers and audience members wrote a Haggadah at the Seder together that incorporated the Black American story of enslavement. This year, they will add part of the Latino experience into the same Haggadah.

Rabbi Judy Schindler (right), co-founder of the Charlotte Black/Jewish Alliance, on the Alliance trip to Selma, Alabama, with Cindy Kistenberg. Photo by Dr. Cindy Kistenberg

The Charlotte Black/Jewish Alliance honored the 60th anniversary of the Edmund Pettus Bridge crossing in Selma, Alabama, by recreating the journey from Atlanta to Selma. The group visited museums on Black history, along with synagogues and Black churches that supported protestors.

“The questions and discussions that happened on the bus — it was eye-opening,” said Ty Green, a Black Christian leader of the group. “We unfolded and opened up about our feelings about what we saw.”

Experiences like these can allow each group to see that the other is not a monolith. “Some of the bias and stereotypes of both communities exist because they’ve really never talked to anyone who was from the other community,” said Harriette Watford Lowenthal, a Black Jewish woman who has led Rekindle cohorts and trained with Exodus Leadership Forum.

She believes the voices of Jews of color are essential to this work. “In my experience, the Black community isn’t very well educated about Jews of color,” she said. Knowing there are Jews from a variety of backgrounds can boost African Americans’ connection with the Jewish community. Those perspectives may be especially important among younger people. One 2024 study found that 18-year-old registered voters are five times more likely to have an unfavorable opinion of Jewish people than 65-year-olds.

Attempts to “bring the band back together,” as Jacques Berlinerblau puts it, have their skeptics. Berlinerblau, a professor in the Center for Jewish Civilization at Georgetown University, wishes these organizations well but doesn’t believe the juggernaut from 60 years ago can be revived. “For the overwhelming majority of the Black community, the relationship has never been central or particularly important,” said Berlinerblau, co-author with Terrance L. Johnson of Blacks and Jews in America: An Invitation to Dialogue.

“I think the most powerful alliance for good in the history of Western civilization is Blacks and Jews together.”

Van JonesCNN commentator and founder of Exodus Leadership Forum

Jones acknowledges that interest in reuniting is higher in the Jewish community than the Black community. “Black people have so many of our own problems that have been accelerated in the past couple of years and feel quite isolated,” he said, pointing to the collapse of job opportunities in the public sector, the end of DEI initiatives, and other challenges. “It’s something of a revelation to Black leaders sometimes that our help would be needed or appreciated in the Jewish community.”

Still, there are signs of momentum. In post-fellowship surveys, 93% of Rekindle graduates report they feel “empowered to address hatred of the other community that I see in my own community” and 80% have “advocated for the other community” six months after graduation.

Exodus Leadership Forum, Spill the Honey, and other leaders are planning to collaborate this spring on a combined national strategy for advancing the Black-Jewish partnership. Collaborations could include students from historically Black colleges and universities traveling to Tel Aviv to study its tech industry, or Black residents accompanying Jews at synagogue for support, Jones said.

The work is crucial during the country’s 250th anniversary, according to Benjamin Franklin Chavis Jr., chairman of Spill the Honey and North Carolina youth coordinator for Martin Luther King Jr. in the early 1960s.

“This is a pivotal year in terms of what defines an American,” Chavis said. “Where are we going? What is the ethos? Can pluralism work, and can we be mutually supportive of one another as brothers and sisters?”

Andrea Cooper has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Smithsonian magazine, and many others. Her honors include the Simon Rockower Award from the American Jewish Press Association for coverage of North American Jewish history.

This article was downloaded from https://forward.com/news/798357/black-jewish-alliances-van-jones-exodus-rekindle/ at Jan 21, 2026 at 11:22 AM EST.

POLITICS | JAN 18, 2026, 5:36 PM EST | UPDATED JAN 20, 2026, 10:57 AM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Why is AIPAC targeting Trump’s ICE funding?

Jacob Kornbluh

The group’s super PAC is criticizing former Rep. Tom Malinowski for backing funding for ICE, reflecting a strategic shift amid Democratic anger at Trump and Israel

Demonstrators protest ICE on Jan. 15. Photo by Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, often a reliable ally of pro-Israel Republicans, is now echoing Democratic outrage over one of President Donald Trump’s most polarizing policies: immigration enforcement. It comes amid backlash sparked by the fatal shooting this month of Renee Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis.

AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, began airing an attack ad over the weekend against former Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski, who is running in a Feb. 5 primary for the House seat vacated by New Jersey Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill. The ad highlights his 2019 vote for a bipartisan border funding bill, which included an increase in funds for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. “We can’t trust Tom Malinowski” to stand up to President Donald Trump, the voiceover says in the 30-second video.

AIPAC has become increasingly controversial among mainstream Democrats for backing pro-Israel Republicans who questioned the 2020 election results. That opposition deepened during the Gaza war as Democratic voters became more polarized over U.S. policy on Israel. Congressional candidates, including some Jewish Democrats, have promised not to take contributions from AIPAC. The group has also drawn attacks from white nationalists and some leaders of the MAGA movement for their lobbying on behalf of a foreign government.

The new ad is especially notable given that AIPAC has spent years cultivating ties to Trump-aligned Republicans, many of whom strongly support aggressive immigration enforcement. By attacking a Democrat over ICE funding while sidestepping Trump himself, the group is threading a narrow needle — aligning rhetorically with Democratic outrage while maintaining its broader bipartisan posture.

In the 2024 election cycle, the group spent $28 million in high-stakes Democratic primaries. That included more than $14 million, which contributed to the defeat of Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a strident critic of Israel. Malinowski, who served two terms in Congress from 2019 to 2023, holds a mainstream Democratic stance on Israel. During his first term, he traveled to Israel on a trip sponsored by the American Israel Education Foundation, AIPAC’s educational affiliate.

Israel has not been a key issue in the crowded special election in the northern New Jersey district, which includes a sizable Jewish electorate. The Jewish Democratic Council of America held a virtual candidate forum last week with eight candidates on issues important to Jewish voters.

A spokesperson for the United Democracy Project did not immediately respond to questions about why the group is targeting Malinowski, particularly on such a deeply contentious political issue. AIPAC spent at least $350,000 on the ad.

AIPAC ad is out https://t.co/f0cH6AIgja pic.twitter.com/udwL7nJgYf

— umichvoter (@umichvoter) January 17, 2026

Malinowski, 60, is a former assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor in President Barack Obama’s second term and previously served as a foreign policy speechwriter for President Bill Clinton. He first ran for Congress in 2018 in New Jersey’s 7th District, saying he was motivated by Trump’s election.

“I am myself an immigrant from Poland. My family was not Jewish, but experienced life under the Nazi occupation,” Malinowski said in an interview at the time. “That’s where my commitment to defending human rights comes from. That’s where my belief in the importance of protecting Israel comes from.” He is a close friend of former Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Malinowski was defeated in the 2022 election.

Malinowski is competing for the open seat against at least two leading contenders: Outgoing Lt. Gov. Tahesha Way and Essex County Commissioner Brendan Gill.

AIPAC typically focuses on U.S.-Israel relations and national security issues. However, its political arm has focused on domestic issues in close contests.

In 2024, they attacked Reps. Jammal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri — two of the first House members to advocate for a ceasefire after the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023 — over their votes against signature Biden-era bills, like infrastructure and health care.

In a statement to the New Jersey Globe, Malinowski called the attack “laughably preposterous” and suggested it would boomerang against AIPAC. “I have many pro-Israel supporters in the district, including AIPAC members, who believe you can be passionately pro-Israel while being critical of Netanyahu,” Malinowski said. “To say that they’re appalled by this ad would be an understatement. In fact, I’m reading a collective sense that AIPAC has lost its mind.”

Jacob Kornbluh is the Forward’s senior political reporter. Follow him on Twitter @jacobkornbluh or email [email protected].

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This article was downloaded from https://forward.com/fast-forward/798444/aipac-malinowski-trump-ice-immigration/ at Jan 21, 2026 at 11:22 AM EST.

Opinions

- There’s a vicious antisemitic precedent for Trump’s demonization of Renée Nicole Good

- I was in a high school production of ‘Anne Frank’ — today in Minnesota, I feel her fear more than ever

OPINION | JAN 19, 2026, 3:43 PM EST | UPDATED JAN 20, 2026, 11:28 AM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

There’s a vicious antisemitic precedent for Trump’s demonization of Renée Nicole Good

Emily Tamkin

What does George Soros have to do with the violence in Minneapolis? Good question.

A portrait of Renée Nicole Good sits among other items at a memorial on Jan. 15. Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

There’s no reason to think that Renée Nicole Good — the woman shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis earlier this month — may have had ties to Jewish billionaire philanthropist George Soros.

Yet President Donald Trump’s administration is reportedly looking into establishing such a connection. And we know why. To understand, all we need to do is look at what happened in Hungary, Soros’ homeland, starting in 2015.

Before that year, conspiracy theories about Soros, the billionaire founder of the Open Society Foundations, had percolated around Central and Eastern Europe for decades. Soros was, after all, rich, famous, and Jewish, invested in both global finance and liberal philanthropy. It was almost too easy to allege that he had manipulated this or that election; that he was using nonprofits to establish a system of unelected international control; or even that he was the recipient of drug money.

But it was after a so-called “migration crisis” that hit Europe in 2015 that the conspiracy theories became something else entirely.

That year, Soros published an essay suggesting a radical rebuilding of the European Union’s asylum system. His ideas, which involved the EU accepting “at least a million asylum-seekers annually for the foreseeable future,” were presented by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s far-right Hungarian government as the “Soros plan” in a 2017 questionnaire, a “national consultation” to allow people to “have their say” about Soros’s proposal.

I do not believe that Orbán and company actually wanted to know what Hungarians thought of Soros’ opinion piece. Instead, I think they wanted to inflame a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment, with the side benefit of turning Soros into not just a scapegoat, but a figure seen as trying to transform everything that everyday Hungarians loved about their country.

In 2018, the Hungarian government came out with “Stop Soros” legislation, a series of laws that criminalized helping those trying to claim asylum. At the time, then-Interior Minister Sandor Pinter said the government wanted to use the “Stop Soros” campaign “to stop Hungary from becoming a country of immigrants.”

Similar attacks, alleging that Soros and his “empire” were trying to “organize” migration and get rid of Christians and conservatives, have continued for years.

Antisemitic conspiracy theories about immigration suggest that people with no real loyalty to any country — a version of the old antisemitic trope of “disloyal Jews” — are trying to use an influx of outsiders to take over a nation. And if politicians can get supporters to believe that, then they can use it to justify anything and everything.

Which is why it was so useful for Hungary’s government to make Soros, who has never held elected office and was not in a position to write Hungarian policy, the face of their campaign for an immigration crackdown. Once authorities convinced the populace that disloyal Jewish elites were trying to undermine their country by flooding it with migrants, what kinds of illiberal crackdowns wouldn’t that populace allow in their theoretical defense?

Generally speaking, conspiracy theories about Soros work because they allow politicians to fight the idea of an enemy — cosmopolitan, anti-national, elite and elitist — instead of dealing with the complexities of reality. And they work because antisemitism has come to be so inherent to a certain kind of cultural consciousness that politicians can take advantage of antisemitic word associations without ever saying “Jew.”

Centering antisemitic conspiracies around immigration specifically changes the stakes. It heightens the differences between “us” and “them.” It’s “us,” the true nationals, versus “them,” those who are not even from our nation and wish to corrode it. It becomes existential.

In other words: The potent mixture of antisemitism and anti-immigrant sentiment can persuade people to accept authoritarianism.

Trump appears to have studied this playbook well.

To much of Trump’s base, as to much of Orbán’s, it’s become natural to believe, or at least to assert, that individuals with no real loyalty to any nation are trying to degrade western countries from within.

We have seen that truth unfold in Minneapolis, in the protest-filled days since Good was killed. Some Republicans have alleged that those taking to the streets in protest are paid agitators; the implication, always, is that they are there to serve the agenda of some shadowy force intent on destabilizing society. The New York Post has pointed out that one NGO involved in protests in Minneapolis has previously received money from Soros’s Open Society Foundations, as if to suggest that Soros is that shadowy force. (To be clear, again, there is no evidence to support the assertion that protesters are out on the streets because Soros is paying them.)

The idea is that people are protesting not because they don’t want masked agents terrorizing their communities, or because they’re outraged that a woman was shot in the face and killed. That explanation doesn’t work for a government that wants to expand its campaign of aggression. Instead, these commentators want us to think that the only conceivable explanation for the protests is that they were paid for by someone with malicious ulterior motives.

We’ve seen Trump frame Soros as such a figure before. In 2018, for instance, Trump mused that perhaps Soros was responsible for a migrant caravan that had become a focus of right-wing fear and ire. And Trump has previously also claimed that Soros, through his philanthropic work, is seeking to undermine and undercut the United States, reportedly going so far as to push prosecutors to investigate Open Society Foundations, including, possibly, for terrorism.

This is the same combination — antisemitism and xenophobia; villainizing immigrants and attacking those who would help them — that proved so potent in Hungary. We don’t need to wonder what’s happening here. We know. We know what those in power are doing and we know why they’re doing it. The question that remains: What can we do in response?

Emily Tamkin is a global affairs journalist. She is the author of The Influence of Soros and Bad Jews: A History of American Jewish Politics and Identities.

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/798633/renee-nicole-good-george-soros-trump/ at Jan 21, 2026 at 11:22 AM EST.

OPINION | JAN 19, 2026, 10:47 AM EST | UPDATED JAN 20, 2026, 11:06 AM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

I was in a high school production of ‘Anne Frank’ — today in Minnesota, I feel her fear more than ever

Jared Zeigler

In spite of the ICE agents patrolling our streets, we still try to believe people are good at heart

Demonstrators protest ICE deployment in St. Paul, Minn. Photo by Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images

I want to tell you what it is like in Minnesota right now.

I grew up in a small town in southeast Minnesota, right on the Mississippi. I graduated with 98 other classmates, most of whom I’d known since kindergarten. This was a predominantly white high school in a very white community of Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists and Episcopalians. I remember only one Jewish family with kids at my school, but none of those kids were in my grade and we didn’t participate in any of the same activities. I was raised Lutheran and didn’t really have an awareness or understanding of Judaism beyond “it’s another type of religion, kinda like being a Catholic.”

The author in a Lincoln High School production of ‘The Diary of Anne Frank.’ Courtesy of Jared Zeigler

I was involved in the arts from a young age and grew up watching plays at the local high school, waiting for the day I’d finally be able to perform there myself. Every year the school did one big play in the fall and, in 2005, my freshman year, it was The Diary of Anne Frank. I auditioned and was cast as Peter van Daan.

As diligent young actors will, my castmates and I dove into research and watched Schindler’s List as part of our dramaturgy. I’d read some historical fiction set in the time period around World War II and had learned about the Holocaust in school, but other than The Sound of Music, this was the first time it was more than words on a page.

We brought our newfound sense of understanding to rehearsal, but the play was still set in the 1940s. Yes, it was a story of real people, but it took place in the past and we were all Gentiles so there was still a sense that we were just pretending to understand. Even though it was realism, this was always a story, and there was always some distancing from it (In college, I would learn that this was a hint of what Bertolt Brecht called Verfremdungseffekt). After curtain call, we took our high school theater make-up off and went to Perkins for a cast party, leaving Anne’s story on the stage.

In 2009, I moved to Minneapolis, and in 2017, I moved to the Central Neighborhood. For the next four years, I lived four blocks from where Derek Chauvin would murder George Floyd in 2020. In 2021, I moved just across the interstate to the next neighborhood over and, since then, have lived eight blocks from where, on Jan. 7, 2026, Jonathan Ross shot Renee Nicole Good in the face and killed her.

The influx of federal agents to Minnesota began before the murder of Renee, but the surge that has followed and the devastation, chaos and destruction are unlike anything I ever thought I would witness in my lifetime.

In May 2020, a curfew was placed on the city after George Floyd was murdered and the city dared to demand justice. On the second or third sleepless night of the uprising, I watched several of my neighbors walk to the corner of the block to check out a loud noise. Within 30 seconds they were surrounded by officers from the police department and the National Guard. They began to flee back to their homes as the officers tried to grab and arrest them for breaking curfew. My roommates and I saw what was happening and stepped out on our front steps, screaming that those were our neighbors, that they lived there, and to just let them go inside.

For the mere act of standing on our front steps and advocating for our neighbors, officers pointed their guns at our faces and ordered us back in the house. They did end up letting the neighbors go, but made sure to roll what felt like an entire battalion of officers and tanks down my quiet residential side street afterwards. I’ve been mugged before, but that was the most unsafe I had ever personally felt in this city.

The set of the Lincoln High production. Courtesy of Jared Zeigler

Since Jan. 7 of this year, I have felt even less safe. The scale of the reign of terror currently being enacted upon the Twin Cities and all across the state is truly unfathomable. A general sense of fear pervades the air. We all know that each of us is at a different level of risk, but we all feel like possible targets of the regime, whether because of the color of our skin or because we dared to say that what is happening here is wrong.

Schools were closed after federal agents descended on Roosevelt High during pick-up. Elected officials, including the president of the Minneapolis City Council, have been assaulted while advocating for their constituents and simply observing and documenting the activity of federal agents. Many of these agents do not wear official uniforms. They cover their faces. They drive around our neighborhoods recklessly. Families are in hiding and fear answering the door. Workers are staying home and struggling to pay rent or buy groceries because they are afraid to leave their homes.

Federal agents are abducting our neighbors. They are going through red lights and ramming people’s cars. They are taking people from bus stops, hospitals, workplaces, schools, daycares, and even from their homes. They lie to our faces and they seem to take pleasure in it. They are demanding to see identification on the street, based on nothing other than skin color. They are kicking down doors, entering homes without judicial warrants, and kidnapping residents. They are tear-gassing our business corridors. Beloved local small businesses are closing or have reduced hours because they don’t have enough staff to stay open — because the staff has been abducted by the feds and whisked away to another state before their families and attorneys could find them, or they are afraid to leave their homes because this might happen to them. Unsurprisingly, Minnesota’s corporate leadership remains silent while masked goons abduct their employees who are on the clock.

None of this is just. None of this is right. And certainly none of this is good or moral.

I no longer feel distanced from Anne Frank’s reality. I know that there have always been horrors in this world, but there is new urgency and fear when this happens in your community. In her diary, Anne wrote that in spite of everything, she still believed that people are really good at heart. I am working to hold onto that hope as well. I do believe that people are good, that it is better to care for our neighbors, and in the words of the late Senator Wellstone, we all do better when we all do better.

Minneapolis believes in this too. The community is taking care of each other. Like Miep Gies, we are donating to food banks and delivering food to those who aren’t able to leave their homes. Notaries roam to witness signatures on paperwork. People are raising money to cover rent for those unable to work. Parents and community members are patrolling daycares and schools during drop-off and pick-up to make sure their kids, teachers and staff are safe. The incredible teachers are offering distance learning options for students who don’t feel safe attending in person. We are whistling and banging drums and letting these agents know that when this is all over, justice will find every one of the miserable souls that ripped apart families and attempted to destroy our community with hate, fear and oppression.

I want to tell you all this because I want you to be prepared if they come to your neighborhoods.

I want to tell you this because we need you to be loud and clear with us that what is happening right now is not OK.

I want to tell you this because there are more of us than there are of them, and the way that Minnesotans of all backgrounds have come pouring out into the streets in the cold, showing up for their neighbors, is the way that we will win. We take care of us.

Jared Zeigler is a casting director and producer in Minneapolis.

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/798477/diary-of-anne-frank-minneapolis-ice-immigration-protest/ at Jan 21, 2026 at 11:22 AM EST.

Culture

- A Jewish lawyer sued Henry Ford and changed how we think about hate speech

- How ‘a bundle of letters’ became a cornerstone of life advice for American Jews

- His mother is Israeli, his father is Palestinian. His life? Complicated.

FILM & TV | JAN 20, 2026, 11:43 AM EST | UPDATED JAN 20, 2026, 3:16 PM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

A Jewish lawyer sued Henry Ford and changed how we think about hate speech

Olivia Haynie

The documentary ‘Sapiro v. Ford’ explores how Aaron Sapiro took on the father of the Model T

A cartoon depiction of the trial between Henry Ford and Aaron Sapiro from 1927. Courtesy of Michael Rose Productions

When Jewish lawyer and labor leader Aaron Sapiro sued Henry Ford for libel, he was doing more than trying to save his own reputation. Described by Jewish history professor James Loeffler as “the first modern hate speech trial in America,” the case disrupted Ford’s ability to publish antisemitic conspiracies in his paper, The Dearborn Independent.

Sapiro took Ford to court in 1925 for publishing 21 articles attacking him as a “globalist” Jew trying to take over the agriculture industry. The documentary Sapiro v. Ford: The Jew Who Sued Henry Ford, directed by Gaylen Ross and produced by Carol King, explores the case through archival materials, interviews with historians, and Sapiro’s own writings, recited by actor Ben Shenkman.

“It’s a David and Goliath story,” King said in an interview. “He took on the most powerful, richest man in America at the time.”

The Dearborn Independent was once the second-largest-circulating newspaper in America, spreading Ford’s antisemitic theories across the country. The legacy of his antisemitism was so strong that Ross’ “family never had a Ford car” when she was growing up in the 1950s. King is not Jewish but was raised in Detroit, where Ford’s company was headquartered. She said his antisemitism “was always talked about as sort of a quirk.”

Sapiro himself didn’t understand the gravity of Ford’s words at first.

“He thought, ‘Who’s gonna believe that stuff? It’s so outrageous,’” King said. “As it turns out, a lot of people did believe it.”

King remembered Ford’s “weird ideas” such as that baseball and jazz were rotting American society — and he blamed their popularity on the Jews. His words had a global impact: Hitler praised Ford in Mein Kampf and, at the Nuremberg trials, Baldur von Schirach, former head of the Hitler Youth, credited Ford with inspiring his own antisemitism.

A graphic about the trial that appeared in The New York Evening Globe. Courtesy of Michael Rose Productions

When Jewish merchants told Sapiro that Ford’s articles were driving away their customers, Sapiro realized he had to try to stop the conspiracies.

“This was one person who stood up, not just for himself — that was important — but also for his community, for his fellow Jewish people,” King said.

King started working on the film over a decade ago with her husband, Michael Rose, a filmmaker who provided archival material for Michael Moore’s Roger & Me and worked on the documentary Who Killed Vincent Chin? They spent 10 years researching the Sapiro case and gathering archival materials, but when Rose became sick with leukemia, the project went on indefinite hiatus. He passed away in September 2020.

Before he died, he had shown Ross, known for her documentary Killing Kasztner, an extended trailer for the project. Ross later offered to help King complete the film.

“How could I say no? It was a gift to me at a time when I needed something badly,” said King.

Ross was particularly interested in making Sapiro’s story more widely known.

“Sapiro, in the Jewish canon, didn’t exist,” Ross said. “He was essentially erased.”

Born to a poor family in San Francisco in 1884, Sapiro survived being abandoned in an orphanage and overcame financial hardship to eventually graduate from the University of Cincinnati College of Law. He worked with the National Farmers Union and introduced a new method of agricultural unionizing that allowed farmers to pool their resources and have collective market power.

Because the Model T had also revolutionized farming, Ford saw himself as the champion of the American farmer and was alarmed by Sapiro’s sudden influence. He was particularly troubled by Sapiro’s visits to farmers in Canada.

“Sapiro could organize farmers and cooperatives all over the country,” Ross said. “But crossing the border made him an example of international Jewry and the conspiracy that Ford believed in.”

Sapiro was targeted in 21 articles in The Dearborn Independent. Courtesy of Michael Rose Productions

The film brings Sapiro to life using Shenkmen to recite his speeches and writings, although it omits some aspects of his life, such as his association with Al Capone that made him the subject of trade racket investigations in Chicago.

Ross and King say Sapiro’s story has implications for understanding modern hate speech. An opening montage of antisemitic headlines from the 1920s — “The Jewish Control of the American Press,” “Jews Are The Curse Of America” — is promptly followed by footage from recent neo-Nazi and white supremacist rallies, offering a warning about what happens when bigotry goes unchecked.

“Not only was he prophetic in worrying about what would happen in a society that condemned not only the Jewish community, but people who were different and refugees,” Ross said of Sapiro. “But his focus on democracy — and he says it strongly — that democracy is not just about politics; it’s about how you live your life and how you collaborate and work together.”

The documentary Sapiro v. Ford: The Jew Who Sued Henry Ford is showing at the New York Jewish Film Festival starting Jan. 21 and the Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival starting Jan. 29.

Correction: The original version of this article incorrectly stated the role of Carol King. She is the film’s producer, not a co-director.

Olivia Haynie is an editorial fellow at the Forward.

- [email protected]

This article was downloaded from https://forward.com/culture/film-tv/798792/a-jewish-lawyer-sued-henry-ford-and-changed-how-we-think-about-hate-speech/ at Jan 21, 2026 at 11:22 AM EST.

CULTURE | JAN 20, 2026, 6:17 AM EST | UPDATED JAN 20, 2026, 12:11 PM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

How ‘a bundle of letters’ became a cornerstone of life advice for American Jews

Andy Carvin

Launched 120 years ago today in 1906, the Forward’s A Bintel Brief advice column explores ‘the most interesting nooks of people’s souls’

Ab Cahan, founder of the Forward and A Bintel Brief. Graphic by Liana Finck

January 20, 2026 marks the 120th anniversary of A Bintel Brief, the Forward’s advice column, launched in 1906 by the paper’s founder and publisher, Ab Cahan. Tackling the personal challenges of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, Cahan and the Bintel Brief columnists who followed him would dispatch their advice with humor, compassion, and honesty.

By 1906, Der Forverts, as the Forward is known in Yiddish, had grown over its initial three decades to become the leading Yiddish-language newspaper in the United States. But A Bintel Brief — Yiddish for “a bundle of letters” — was something the paper hadn’t tried before. Well, not exactly.

In his introduction to the very first Bintel Brief, which is preserved online at the National Library of Israel, Cahan explained that the new column had been inspired by a section of the paper devoted to letters to the editor that launched three years earlier.

A Bintel Brief, however, would be an advice column, focusing on letters “that expressed issues of … human interest,” Cahan explained. He continued, “Readers will find in the Bintel Brief letters an interesting turning of pages from the Book of Life … Hundreds of diverse emotions, interests and lost opportunities will be expressed here. Hundreds of various vibrations of the human heart will be heard here.”

History would prove him right. Over the next 120 years, A Bintel Brief would explore the “various vibrations of the human heart” with homespun Jewish advice, tens of thousands of times over, and along with its contemporary advice columnists like Dorothy Dix inspire countless advice columns across U.S. newspapers, including “Dear Abby” and Ann Landers (née Esther Friedman).

First edition of A Bintel Brief, Jan. 20, 1906. Courtesy of Forward Archive/NLI

In his autobiography Pages from My Life, which Cahan published 100 years ago in 1926, he recalled, “I had always wished that the Forverts would receive stories from ‘daily life’ — dramas, comedies or truly curious events that weren’t written at a desk but rather in the tenements and factories and cafés — everywhere that life was the author of the drama … How to do this? Not an easy task — much harder than writing an interesting drama or comedy.”

“One day in January 1906,” he continued, “[my secretary, Leon] Gottlieb told me about three letters that had arrived which didn’t seem suited for any particular department … All three letters were of a personal nature rather than a communal one, and each told an individual story. I considered the three letters and my response was: Let’s print them together and call it A Bintel Brief.”

There’s also the apocryphal version of the story, illustrated by cartoonist Liana Finck while working on a series of cartoons inspired by A Bintel Brief that eventually became a book in 2014. “Rumor has it, the letter on the top of the pile Abraham Cahan’s secretary brought him that strange day in 1906 was two feet long and sewn together with scraps of industrial thread. The spelling was atrocious, but the tears that spewed out of the letter were real — Cahan tasted them to make sure.”

While perhaps nothing more than a mayse, the story rightly captures the willingness of Forverts readers to share their individual problems with A Bintel Brief and seek advice.

And some of them still resonate today.

For example, in the first edition of the column, a bride-to-be reached out because of a debate that erupted with her fiancé after she suggested that mothers are more faithful to their children than fathers because they are the ones saddled with the responsibility of childcare, to which the fiancé angrily replied that women make too big of a deal of their role as caregivers, and that fathers are more dependable. Cahan replied that “smart, serious minded parents raise children that are both truly loyal and have both feet on the ground” like the mother and father. To this, he added, “It’s best for your future children that you read all you can, attend as many lectures as possible, and develop together and grow intellectually. That will create a pair of parents who best know how to raise their children and will be of service in their devotion and love.”

It also did not take long for questions regarding interfaith relationships to emerge in the column. One letter that same year featured a newlywed Jewish man describing the fraying relationship with his Christian wife over the first year of marriage. “Mixed marriage between a Gentile and a Jew is a complicated affair,” Bintel acknowledged, before putting a spin on the then-common story of Jewish parents sitting shiva for their son marrying a Gentile woman: “Not enough has been said about the Gentile family. For while the parents of the Gentile girl may accept the Jewish son-in-law and tolerate the marriage, the girl loses many of her friends, former classmates and relatives.”

Writing for the Forward in 2014 about Finck’s book, Yevegeniya Traps noted that letters like these offered “a succinctly potent representation of the lives of Eastern-European immigrants trying to make their way in early-20th-century New York.” She added, “No artist or journalist could render the doubt, uncertainty and backbreaking work of life in the New World as clearly and honestly as the words of sufferers seeking wisdom” from A Bintel Brief.

Or as Cahan concluded in his autobiography, “Everyone wrote about that which was closest to their hearts. The result was that the Bintel Brief would be assembled out of those letters that revealed the most interesting nooks of people’s souls.”

Andy Carvin is non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and former social media editor at NPR.

This article was downloaded from https://forward.com/culture/798666/a-bintel-brief-120th-anniversary/ at Jan 21, 2026 at 11:22 AM EST.

CULTURE | JAN 19, 2026, 5:38 PM EST | UPDATED JAN 20, 2026, 4:00 PM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

His mother is Israeli, his father is Palestinian. His life? Complicated.

Noah Hirsch-Rechter

Ibrahim Miari’s autobiographical one-man play, ‘In Between’, is a valuable account of his dual identity

Miari, with a suitcase that will cause him oh-so-much-trouble Courtesy of Ibrahim Miari

Ibrahim Miari begins his one-man autobiographical show, In Between, by spinning in a circle, arms outstretched, his body swaying to the strains of Arabic music and his smiling face lit by the spotlight above.

It’s a lyrical opening that softens up the audience before Miari, who’s a playwright and lecturer, gets to the meat of the play: his identity. His father, we learn, is a Palestinian-Muslim, while his mother is a Jewish-Israeli. (She converted to Islam to marry his father.) Miari doesn’t know how they met, so he concocts a fantasy version, a meet-cute set to a Beatles soundtrack, for this weekday audience at Northeastern University’s Blackman Theater. It’s gooey and romantic, but it prefigures one of the play’s defining motifs — that, political turmoil be damned, all you need is love. If this was perhaps an overly rosy outlook in 2011, when Miari first performed In Between, today it seems positively far-fetched.

Miari’s parents eventually settled in Akko, a mixed Arab-Jewish city on the coast of northern Israel. In the first of a series of episodes from Miari’s childhood, he attends a mainstream Israeli school — over his father’s objections — where he celebrates Israel’s Independence Day and, for a Purim costume contest, dresses up as a garden in bloom, winning first prize. His father tells his son that next year he will dress up as a cactus, the better to let his classmates know they’re on stolen land.

Miari speaks unaccented Hebrew; his teachers and friends call him Avraham. Later, he transfers to a nearby Palestinian-Arabic school, and there he commemorates Independence Day rather differently, as the Nakba, or Catastrophe. His teachers and friends call him Ibrahim.

Such episodes illustrate not just Miari’s duelling cultural obligations, but the difficulties he will face reconciling them — after all, we never see him in an environment where both are equally embraced. (It should be noted we are given his mother’s perspective only too rarely.)

Miari toggles easily, impressively, between his life’s principal characters. Props are only occasionally employed. His eyebrows do much of the heavy lifting: they furrow, and Miari is transformed, no longer a wide-eyed, adolescent Avraham/Ibrahim, but his gloomy father.

At a Canadian summer camp for peace activists, Miari, now an adult, meets and swiftly falls for a Jewish-American woman, Sarah Goldberg — they get engaged, but finding a wedding officiant open to a hybrid ceremony proves difficult. Even a Buddhist cleric (Sarah is a so-called BuJew) turns the couple down. Miari, who has a tendency to over-explain, laments that he’s “not Jewish enough, not Muslim enough, not even Buddhist enough!”

The play’s other set piece is from later in Miari’s life, an airport encounter-turned-interrogation with an El Al security agent suspicious of Miari’s overstuffed suitcase — which he’s borrowed from Sarah. Narrowing his eyes at the suitcase’s name label, the agent says, “You don’t look like a Sarah, and you definitely don’t look like a Goldberg.”

The idea that the agent is an oaf and a bigot is plausible enough, but he’s so much a caricature that the seriousness of Miari’s point, that he’s forever suspended between Arab and Israeli, neither one thing nor the other, gets muddled. Miari gives Sarah’s mother the same treatment: meeting him for the first time, she provides little more than a whistlestop tour of stereotypes of elderly Jewish-American women. It’s grim to watch.

Both characters exemplify In Between’s biggest shortcoming: its lack of subtlety. Sure, it’s a funny play — Miari is a gifted physical comic — but the hijinks don’t really illuminate the challenges of Miari’s Arab-Jewish identity; mostly, they’re a distraction. (Case in point: Miari’s scene partner, when he searches for a wedding officiant, is an eight-foot puppet dressed as an Orthodox Rabbi, which Miari ventriloquizes.)

In short, there’s a poignancy deficit, which is made all the more stark by the play’s standout moment. Near the end, Miari talks directly to the audience about his grandmothers, one Jewish, the other Palestinian, both of whom have passed away. They lived barely five miles from each other, but never met. “I’m sad they won’t see my wedding,” Miari says, “or meet their grandchildren.” He sits glumly on a chair, looking like a lost child. It’s sad and tender, a welcome moment of introspection in an otherwise helter-skelter production.

In Between concludes on an upbeat note, Miari informing the audience that he and Sarah were married in a cross-cultural, officiant-less wedding. Marriage — love — has quieted his existential turmoil, he tells us. He has at last found the belonging he’s coveted for decades.

It’s a sweet message but solipsistic — not least with today’s Middle East as a backdrop. I found it hard to believe Miari’s marriage meant he could forget his decades-long struggle over his split identity, especially when that happy union, at least in the play’s telling, did not address this issue so much as ignore it. Still, it’s an ending in keeping with the play’s broader tone — heavy on humor and shtick, lighter altogether on substance.

Noah is a Forward intern who recently completed a master’s in journalism at City St George’s, University of London and previously worked as an Education Associate at Harvard Hillel, where he organized educational trips; taught seminars to undergraduates on a range of Jewish subjects; oversaw Hillel’s social media; and ran its social justice and equity programming.

This article was downloaded from https://forward.com/culture/798603/miari-play-palestinian-arab-jewish-israeli-split-identity/ at Jan 21, 2026 at 11:22 AM EST.

Table of Contents

The Forward: 2026 Jan 21

News

How a Persian Jewish immigrant became the rodeo king of California

How the push to unionize at Breads Bakery became a debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Black and Jewish people were allies once. Can they be again?

Why is AIPAC targeting Trump’s ICE funding?

Opinions

There’s a vicious antisemitic precedent for Trump’s demonization of Renée Nicole Good

I was in a high school production of ‘Anne Frank’ — today in Minnesota, I feel her fear more than ever

Culture

A Jewish lawyer sued Henry Ford and changed how we think about hate speech

How ‘a bundle of letters’ became a cornerstone of life advice for American Jews

His mother is Israeli, his father is Palestinian. His life? Complicated.