- News

- Opinions

- Culture

News

- NCJW names new leader as group steps up work on Israel, antisemitism

- Proposed laws aim to test the Supreme Court’s ban on public school-sponsored prayer

NEWS | FEB 9, 2026, 4:37 PM EST | UPDATED FEB 9, 2026, 4:46 PM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

NCJW names new leader as group steps up work on Israel, antisemitism

Arno Rosenfeld

Jody Rabhan also acknowledged a need to continue participating in coalitions beyond the Jewish community

Attendees at a 2022 abortion rights rally organized by the National Council for Jewish Women. Photo by Getty Images

The National Council of Jewish Women has named Jody Rabhan, its longtime policy director, to lead the organization as it grapples with how to balance progressive advocacy with support for Israel.

The 133-year-old group has helped rally Jews in favor of reproductive rights, especially after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade four years ago, but drifted closer to more conservative Jewish establishment organizations amid the Israel-Hamas war.

Some of the drive behind that shift appeared to come from Sheila Katz, before she announced she was stepping down as CEO in the fall. “We need those who claim to be our friends to passionately and unequivocally condemn antisemitism,” Katz posted shortly after the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack. “Silence is not neutrality; it’s complicity.”

The organization joined with a coalition of Jewish groups that took an especially hard line on criticism of Israel, including the Conference of Presidents and the Brandeis Center, during a spat with former President Joe Biden’s Education Department.

“Oct. 7 really changed everything, and that trajectory for NCJW was very real,” Rabhan said in an interview with the Forward. “And in some ways that made a lot of sense for us.”

Rabhan referenced instances of sexual assault against women on Oct. 7, and against Israeli hostages in Gaza, and said that NCJW was well-positioned to address antisemitism on the left because it participated in many progressive coalitions. “It’s work that we are committed to continuing,” she added, noting that countering antisemitism and hate was a new addition to its current strategic plan.

Israel has “certainly always been part of our portfolio and that’s only going to grow,” said Laura Monn Ginsburg, the president of NCJW’s board of directors.

Jody Rabhan was named CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women on Monday, elevating the longtime executive at the group to its top leadership role. Courtesy of National Council of Jewish Women

But Rabhan, who first joined NCJW over 25 years ago, also emphasized the importance of staying “in community” with non-Jewish organizations on the left. “Particularly in this moment, where we’re in an administration that is really testing the levers of our democracy, we need one another more than ever,” she said, referencing President Donald Trump.

Katz, who now works for the Jewish Federations of North America, praised Rabhan in a text message as a “powerful and deeply trusted choice” to lead the organization, and said she would continue “strengthening both our communal voice and our broader civil rights impact.”

NCJW has undergone several significant changes in recent years. Nancy Kaufman helped shift its focus from community service to advocacy during her time as CEO in the 2010s, including relocating its headquarters from New York to Washington, D.C.

Katz was hired shortly thereafter as a rising star in the Jewish world. She came from Hillel International, where she served as vice president for student engagement and participated in a New York Times investigation into sexual harassment allegations against financier and philanthropist Michael Steinhardt.

During her tenure, Katz helped mobilize Jews following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, including raising hundreds of thousands of dollars to help fund abortions and providing educational materials and other resources for synagogues and Jewish organizations that wanted to get involved in promoting reproductive rights.

More than 2,000 clergy signed onto its “Rabbis for Repro” campaign, while synagogues across the country hosted their own “Repro Shabbat.” Yet NCJW has since had to navigate deep divisions in the reproductive rights world over Israel following Oct. 7 that have included allegations of antisemitism at major abortion advocacy nonprofits.

NCJW has not historically lobbied on behalf of Israel, even as it has long worked on gender equality issues there. Nevertheless, it has occasionally found itself targeted by progressive activists including the local D.C. chapter of the Sunrise Movement, which briefly sought to boycott the organization over its stance on Israel.

“Sometimes you have to change partners in certain moments — and we’re not afraid to do that when necessary,” said Ginsburg, the board president. “But overall we want to be in partnership and we want to find a way to make that work.”

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.

- [email protected]

- arnorosenfeld.bsky.social

This article was downloaded from https://forward.com/news/803989/ncjw-jody-rabhan-israel-antisemitism/ at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

NEWS | FEB 9, 2026, 6:00 AM EST | UPDATED FEB 9, 2026, 6:03 AM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Proposed laws aim to test the Supreme Court’s ban on public school-sponsored prayer

Hannah Feuer

Lawmakers in Tennessee and Florida, as well as Congress, want public schools to set aside time for prayer and Bible study, threatening a milestone decision won by Jews decades ago

People pray outside the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2022 following its decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. The Supreme Court ruled that a Washington state high school football coach had a right to pray on the field immediately after games. Photo by Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

Public schools have been barred from sponsoring official prayer since the Supreme Court’s 1962 ruling in Engel v. Vitale, a landmark decision that cemented the principle of church-state separation in American law.

Now, lawmakers in several states are advancing measures that aim to bring prayer back into public schools — with potential to reverse decades of precedent as politicians push for Christian prayer to return as a commonplace part of the school day.

In Tennessee, a bill introduced last month would require public schools to set aside time for voluntary prayer and the reading of “the Bible or other religious text.” Students would opt in to the prayer period by getting their parents to sign a consent form, which also requires participating students to waive their right to sue.

Texas enacted a nearly identical law last year, empowering school boards to institute prayer and Bible-reading periods in schools across their districts by March 1 — a move more than 160 religious leaders urged school boards to reject in an open letter last month.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton encouraged students to use the time to recite the Lord’s Prayer “as taught by Jesus Christ.”

In Florida, a proposed amendment to the state constitution would allow students and teachers to lead prayer over a loudspeaker at school-sponsored events — even though the Supreme Court ruled student-led, student-initiated prayer at football games unconstitutional two decades ago.

Meanwhile, a federal bill introduced by Rep. David Rouzer (R-N.C.) last month would withhold federal funding from public schools that “restrict voluntary school prayer,” and new guidance from the Department of Education released last week allows teachers to pray with students.

Nik Nartowicz, lead policy counsel at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the Supreme Court’s church-state separation precedents like Engel v. Vitale aren’t in immediate jeopardy — but they are steadily being undermined.

“Teachers have a little bit more right to pray in public schools than they did last time. And then it just kind of slowly builds,” Nartowicz said. “The very principles of religious freedom in public school are very clearly under attack.”

A Jewish plaintiff

In 1951, the Board of Regents of New York proposed that public schools start the day with what it called a “non-denominational” prayer. Students were able to opt out with a parent’s signature.

“Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country. Amen,” the prayer read.

Five families sued, arguing that the school-organized prayer violated their constitutional rights. They came from a range of religious backgrounds, including Judaism, atheism, Unitarianism and humanism.

Some of the parents who brought suit against public schoolroom prayer pose with their children, after the Supreme Court said the prayer was unconstitutional on June 26, 1962. The group was sparked by Lawrence Roth, right foreground. Photo by AP Photo

But the case quickly took on a Jewish character, as a Jewish parent named Steven Engel became the lead plaintiff, and a broad cross-section of Jewish organizations became involved with the case. The American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith and the Synagogue Council of America — which represented 70 Jewish organizations spanning Orthodox, Conservative and Reform — all filed briefs urging the court to strike down school-sponsored prayer.

According to Bruce Dierenfield, author of The Battle over School Prayer: How Engel v. Vitale Changed America, when the court released its decision the blowback was intense — and, at times, antisemitic.

The Supreme Court received the largest amount of hate mail in its history. Politicians called to amend the Constitution and impeach the justices, and 15 states refused to immediately discontinue prayer and Bible reading in their schools. An angry protester burned a cross in plaintiff Lawrence Roth’s family driveway.

“Some people say this case produced more of a backlash than almost any other case in American history,” Dierenfield said. “It seemed to be the death knell of ‘Christian America.’”

A changing landscape

In the decades after Engel, the Supreme Court repeatedly reinforced the ban on school-sponsored prayer, controversially ruling that even required moments of silence could be unconstitutional if intended to encourage prayer.

That line shifted in 2022. The court sided with Joe Kennedy, a high school football coach in Washington state who had been placed on leave for praying at midfield immediately after games, sometimes joined by players.

The school district’s actions “rested on a mistaken view that it had a duty to ferret out and suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion. “The Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination.”

The Kennedy ruling “was kind of a slap at the absolutism of Engel,” Dierenfield said. “It epitomizes somewhat of a new day.”

The decision also hinged in part on disputed interpretation of facts: The majority argued that Kennedy had engaged in “short, private, personal prayer,” while the dissent said he prayed with students in a setting where they could feel pressured to participate.

The case highlighted the often-blurry line between voluntary and coercive prayer, a tension made more complicated by peer pressure and the authority teachers and coaches hold over students.

According to Nartowicz, teachers and students are free to pray or read religious texts as long as they don’t disrupt or pressure others — but that boundary is crossed when teachers pray with students. Even though new policies make prayer and Bible-reading periods opt-in, he said, the practice can still feel coercive.

“If a teacher’s praying, because teachers have so much control over students, a student might say, Oh, I need to pray in order to make sure I’m in the good favor of so-and-so to get a good grade in their class,” he said.

Rabbi Michael Shulman of Congregation Ohabai Sholom in Nashville, Tennessee, who wrote an op-ed speaking out against his state’s school prayer bill, shares similar concerns.

He said children at his congregation are often the only Jewish students at their schools, and a school-sponsored period for prayer would only worsen their feelings of alienation.

“Anytime religion and government mix, there’s a danger of signaling that this is what the state is promoting — which beliefs are normal, which ones are not,” Shulman told the Forward. “So when public schools, that are state institutions, promote this, it really changes the meaning of what ‘voluntary’ is.”

‘Exactly the right time’

School prayer advocates are explicit about their goal: They want the Supreme Court, which currently has a 6-3 conservative majority, to take up their case.

It’s unclear if the court will choose to weigh in. In November, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal in a case where a lower court had upheld a ban on broadcasting a pregame prayer over the loudspeaker at a high school football game.

But proponents of school prayer aren’t giving up. The Tennessee bill states that “the idea of separation of church and state departs from the religious liberty guaranteed by the Constitution of the State of Tennessee” and lists 11 Supreme Court decisions, including Engel, as examples of rulings that it says conflict.

“I think this is exactly the right time to have this issue brought back into the public square, both because our Supreme Court has, I think, more properly aligned in most recent decisions and because I think we just need to have prayer back in our schools,” Rep. Gino Bulso, the bill’s sponsor, told The Tennessee Conservative.

Meanwhile, Paxton has pledged to defend in court any school district that implements a voluntary prayer period.

For those who remember how fiercely Engel divided the country, a new showdown at the Supreme Court feels almost inevitable.

“I sit on tenterhooks all the time about seeing that somebody’s going to bring a suit saying that they have the right to have organized prayer in public schools. I would not be the least bit surprised to see a case — see the Engel case come up again in the Supreme Court,” Jonathan Engel, Steven Engel’s son, said in a 2023 documentary. “So we may have to fight this battle again.”

Hannah Feuer joined the Forward as a general assignment reporter in May 2025 after two years as a culture reporter at Seven Days, an independent weekly in Burlington, Vermont. Originally from the Washington, D.C., area, she is a 2023 graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

- [email protected]

- @hannah_feuer

This article was downloaded from https://forward.com/news/803668/school-prayer-engel-vitale-supreme-court-tennessee-texas-florida/ at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

Opinions

- In Trump’s instinct to punish and desecrate, a rejection of the values of King David

- Why the Super Bowl antisemitism ad uses a familiar slur

OPINION | FEB 10, 2026, 3:26 PM EST | UPDATED FEB 10, 2026, 5:41 PM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

In Trump’s instinct to punish and desecrate, a rejection of the values of King David

Emily Tamkin

A biblical parable about speaking truth to power takes on new meaning in a time of would-be authoritarians

President Donald Trump on Feb. 6. Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images

When is it most essential to speak truth to power: when power is amenable to listening, or when power, confronted, digs in further?

The Bible has a powerful parable about that question in the story of Nathan the Prophet and King David. And as President Donald Trump’s administration showcases a tendency to punish those they’ve already wronged — like pro-Palestinian Columbia University protest leader Mahmoud Khalil and Renée Good’s widow — it’s of fresh relevance in the United States today.

After King David sleeps with Bathsheba and has her husband killed, God is displeased, and sends Nathan to confront the king.

Nathan tells the king the story of two men. One is rich, with large flocks and herds, and one poor, with just one small lamb who “used to share his morsel of bread, drink from his cup, and nestle in his bosom; it was like a daughter to him.” When a traveler came, the rich man served him not one of his own flock, but the poor man’s one little lamb.

This story enrages the king, who vows, “As God lives, the man who did this deserves to die!”

Bad news, Nathan tells him: King David is that man. What has he done with all his power and riches? Taken another man’s wife, and had him killed.

The king, hearing this, admits his guilt. The act of admitting shame sets a crucial precedent for the Jewish people. Because David takes stock of himself and what he has done, and accepts his punishment — the death of his first child with Bathsheba — he is allowed to move forward.

In our modern U.S., we must ask: What would have happened if David had responded to Nathan’s story by digging his heels in? If he had tried to blame Bathsheba’s dead husband or desecrate his memory, would that make what Nathan did futile or unimportant?

Since the beginning of Trump’s second term one year ago, we have repeatedly seen his administration fail to live up to King David’s example. Time and again, the public has served the role of Nathan, beseeching Trump to look at how he deploys his wealth and power, and do better. And time and again, we’ve been met with not just defiance, but with an insistence on pursuing the original course of action with more vehemence.

We have seen that with Khalil, whom the Trump administration continues to try to deport, despite the fact that he holds a green card and has no criminal record.

We have seen it in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom the administration mistakenly deported to El Salvador. Instead of apologizing profusely to Garcia and his family for the trauma they suffered due to the government’s ineptitude, the administration responded by making retroactively building a criminal case against him a top priority.

We’ve seen it in the administration’s efforts to investigate the widow of Renée Good after Good’s killing by an ICE agent set off national protests. To put a finer point on it: They shot and killed a woman and then reportedly decided to try to prove it was she who was guilty.

Most recently, we’ve seen it in the federal government’s motion to end asylum claims for 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his family. A picture of Ramos being detained, wearing a blue bunny hat and looking terrified, sent shockwaves through the country. He and his father recently returned to Minnesota after being arrested and sent to a detention center in Texas.

The administration’s response to the righting of this grievous wrong — the detention of a tiny, traumatized child — was not to, say, change its policy of arresting, detaining, and trying to deport children, but to try to further punish that little boy’s family.

It’s as if, on hearing, “that man is you!,” King David decided to open an inquiry into the crimes of Bathsheba’s late husband — with no evidence that any such crimes existed. Over and over again, Trump and his team respond to our efforts to speak truth to their power by finding some other poor man’s lamb to slaughter.

Which brings us back to Nathan.

If King David had rejected Nathan’s message, I don’t think that would have made the message itself less important. I think it would have simply meant Nathan must continue to try, that he must keep insisting that the king should recognize his abuse of power, and do his best to make it right.

That might have felt pointless to Nathan. I think it can feel pointless to all of us today. It can feel that, for every good thing that happens — like the release of a 5-year-old from the horrors of detention — the administration seems determined to be doubly cruel. For every horrific act they commit by mistake, they seem determined to carry out a more horrific one on purpose.

But it isn’t pointless. Our would-be king may not heed the call, but others do. Prosecutors keep resigning instead of trying to punish the innocent. Judges continue to name the administration’s abuses, and work to undo them. Jewish organizations continue to reject the idea that the detention of pro-Palestinian students for exercising free speech is a matter of national security.

Trump may never admit, in Nathan’s words, that he is that man. But the rest of us can keep insisting: not only on the innocence of those being hurt in this country, but on the guilt of all of those who are hurting them.

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/804211/trump-renee-good-king-david/ at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

LETTERS | FEB 7, 2026, 8:00 PM EST | UPDATED FEB 9, 2026, 11:24 AM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Why the Super Bowl antisemitism ad uses a familiar slur

Adam Katz

The Blue Square Alliance Against Hate explains the research underlying its new ad campaign focused on allyship

The Blue Square Alliance Against Hate’s new Super Bowl ad. Courtesy of Blue Square Alliance to End Hate

In response to “Robert Kraft’s new Super Bowl ad about antisemitism already feels dated”

To the editors:

The sticky note cruelly slapped on a high school student’s backpack didn’t have to say “Dirty Jew.”

It could have been any one of dozens of other antisemitic slurs, and believe me, throughout my life and current line of work, I’ve seen and heard them all. At the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate, our Command Center closely tracks the spread of antisemitism online, in all its pernicious forms.

In his piece for the Forward about our new Super Bowl ad, PJ Grisar argues that the ad misses the mark by using “Dirty Jew,” characterizing it as old-fashioned and out of touch with the heavily coded, meme-driven ways students typically express antisemitism today.

We’ve seen all of those slurs gaining traction among younger people that Grisar gave as examples of how kids hate today.

But we didn’t pull “Dirty Jew” out of the history books. In creating the ad, the Blue Square Alliance made a conscious decision to follow the research. Our decisions are based on data, from the one billion social media posts we analyze daily, to our semi-annual 7,000-participant survey on American sentiment toward Jews and antisemitism, to our multi-stage audience testing that is foundational to our creative development.

Here’s the hard data: With nearly 500 million social media impressions since 2023, “Dirty Jew” is a slur that has managed to penetrate all corners of American discourse. Worse yet, its usage online has increased by 174% in the past three years, growing at a significantly higher rate than other slurs. And sadly, the last few years have seen more than a few disturbing and real incidents of the scenario in the ad play out in real life. In U.S. high schools. Right now. Not 1950.

This data-guided approach drove our selection of “Dirty Jew” among all the possible antisemitic slurs as the one to appear on the sticky note. Even though at first glance this phraseology may seem dated, it’s actually timeless and ubiquitous — scarily — and is even outpacing other slurs in frequency of use.

So, whether you’re a Boomer, Millennial or Gen Z, there’s no subtlety to what this ad is showing you: This is antisemitism, pure and simple. And, as Grisar acknowledges in his piece, the challenge of storytelling within a 30-second ad window requires a clear, unambiguous message. In that short time, clarity beats complexity.

It was also important to us to use the high school setting and focus our ad on a younger demographic because that is where we have seen the most concerning trends in antisemitism data. Our most recent survey data shows that Gen Z is three times more likely to witness antisemitism than older generations, and yet nearly twice as likely to say it is not a problem.

At the heart of this campaign is Blue Square Alliance’s dedication to addressing another data point: More than 100 million Americans say they are unengaged in the collective effort to stand up against anti-Jewish hate. We have spent the past few years closely studying this segment, and our surveys show that unengaged Americans often don’t know Jewish Americans, they aren’t familiar with antisemitism (their news feeds and social feeds don’t share the awful stories that we all know too well), and they don’t think antisemitism is a significant problem. Importantly, they don’t feel personal or societal pressure to be an ally.

That’s exactly why we’re using the Super Bowl — a cultural touchstone for the entire country — to raise awareness and model allyship. We test all of our ads, including “Sticky Note” and our earlier ads like “Tony,” specifically with this target audience. What we’re seeing is promising.

Among the unengaged, exposure to our messaging measurably shifts attitudes: Viewers become 36% more familiar with recent antisemitic incidents and 41% more likely to see antisemitism as a major problem in the United States. And the impact doesn’t stop at awareness — it moves people to act. After seeing our ads, unengaged viewers are 27% more likely to say they would speak up when they witness antisemitism.

And our work to cultivate allies extends far beyond the television screen. We complement our social media, outdoor and audio campaigns with on-the-ground bridge-building to strengthen connections with Americans across communities and reach those who have not yet been meaningfully involved in this issue. Over the past year, we’ve expanded our programs to bring more people into the conversation, like our partnership with UNCF and Hillel International, now on a 14-stop “Unity Dinner” tour, to connect Black and Jewish students on campuses nationwide. And last fall, we joined with the Appeal of Conscience Foundation to launch “Stand Up Sunday,” an interfaith effort that mobilized hundreds of thousands of congregants across the nation to reject antisemitism and all faith-based hate.

Our founder, Robert Kraft, created the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate in 2019 because he recognized that reversing the rise in antisemitism would require both awareness and empathy.

With “Sticky Note,” we’re showing what it means to be an upstander and giving Americans a clear, accessible way to step off the sidelines. We won’t simply win over the unengaged through displays of toughness and bravado alone, as some people have suggested. To reach the unengaged majority, you have to meet them where they are — not where we, as a deeply committed Jewish community, already stand.

Adam Katz is the president of the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate.

This article was downloaded from https://forward.com/opinion/letters/803770/super-bowl-antisemitism-ad/ at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

Culture

- Why Bad Bunny’s halftime show delighted New York Jews of a certain age

- The PBS series ‘Black and Jewish America’ gets it right — except the Black and Jewish part

CULTURE | FEB 10, 2026, 3:18 PM EST | UPDATED FEB 10, 2026, 5:41 PM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Why Bad Bunny’s halftime show delighted New York Jews of a certain age

Debbie Nathan

The Jewish love affair with Latin music and ‘Nueva Yol’ dates back to mambo dancing in the Catskills and stories of a shared diaspora

Bad Bunny performs in the Superbowl halftime show Feb. 8. Photo by Getty Images

Since last month, a TikTok has been floating around, showing arthritic Latino grandmas and grandpas hearing Bad Bunny for the first time, courtesy their bemused grandchildren. On the reel, he samples “Un Verano en Nueva York,” a 50-year-old salsa song about New York City — or “Nueva Yol,” as Bad Bunny calls his update in his echt Puerto Rican accent. He sang “Nueva Yol” at the Super Bowl halftime show. The original dates from the 1970s, when the old folks were young and lithe and out on the town. On TikTok, when they listen to the new version, they perk up, and then they dance, as the kids look on, delighted.

I imagine that something similar happened to countless aging Jewish salsa music freaks like myself when they saw the halftime show. I’m 75 now, and I got up and danced, remembering those years during Jimmy Carter’s presidency when I donned high heels and tight skirts to dance away my Saturdays nights at venues like Casino 14 — catorce, it was pronounced — on 14th Street right by Union Square. I’d had a Jewish boyfriend whose mom, a Bell telephone operator, had danced mambo in the 1950s and taught her son the moves. He taught me the cha-cha and rhumba; other friends my age, many of them Jews, loved the music too and knew the steps and clubbed along with me. All this seemed no more remarkable to us than knowing how to say the prayer over the bread on Friday nights.

As Bad Bunny was hoisted up and tossed into the area, some were reminded of a Jewish wedding reception. Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images

The Jewish love affair with Latin music began back in the 1950s and, since then, Jews have played it as musicians, produced it as record company owners, and DJed it in clubs and on the radio. Scholars have tried to explain the affinity, and why it has been such a comfortable fit for both ethnic groups. Some speculate that the music of both cultures tends to minor scales. Others point out that, as Jewish neighborhoods such as East Harlem were transitioning in the 1950s to Puerto Rican enclaves, the two groups lived side by side. (Working-class Jews even shared factory spaces with Puerto Rican laborers, especially in the garment industry.)

And there was the Borscht Belt. Starting in the 1950s, the big hotels typically maintained two house bands: one for mainstream pop, and the other for all Latin — the tummlers taught mambo lessons around the swimming pool. By the 1930s, Puerto Rico had been thoroughly colonized by the U.S. and was thoroughly poverty stricken. A vast exit began to the mainland: Puerto Ricans, after all, were American citizens. Many moved to the Bronx. By the 1960s, many of the kids had grown up to be musicians. Some had big bands and a big-band sound. They played regular gigs at places like Kutscher’s in the Catskills. You can still hear Tito Puente in 1959 playing “Grossinger’s Cha Cha Cha.”

Some of the musicians were Jews — for example, Larry Harlow, a classically trained pianist whose grandfather was a cantor and father a Latin music bandleader in the Catskills. Harlow’s actual family name was Kahn; his nickname among musicians and audiences was “El Judio Maravilloso,” the Marvelous Jew. His cousin Lewis Kahn was a salsa violinist and trombonist who’d studied at Julliard; he was “El Segundo Judio Maravilloso.” Once, I gave Lewis a lift back to his hotel post-concert, after I saw him shambling down the street alone. Painfully shy and bespectacled, he seemed more like a member of the Frankfurt School than someone in a band with matching suits and screaming brass.

Puerto Rican musician Tito Puente whose repertoire included the “Grossinger’s Cha Cha Cha.” Photo by Raph GATTI / AFP via Getty Images

My foreign language in high school had been Spanish. My conversational skills were good but still stilted. I didn’t get better — didn’t pick up the rhythms and slang and everyday spoken beauty of the language until the 1970s. I began listening then, over and over and over, to my growing collection of LPs from the salsa label Fania, copying the words and learning how they mashed together. Based in New York City, Fania even had a fan magazine. New York also had the annual Puerto Rican parade, and I vividly recall running into impromptu conga circles on street corners, where young people sang not just in Spanish but also in Lucumi, the deeply spiritual language of the Afro-Caribbean Yoruba and Santeria religions. They’d picked up the words from the same records I listened to. Their devotion to the musical aspects of their heritage reminded me of my fascination with cantorial music, which was also available on vintage LPs and even on low-watt radio in Brooklyn.

Twenty-five years ago I went to Columbia one summer to study Yiddish. In class I learned that Molly Picon had sung in Yiddish in the 1940s on the Forward-owned radio station WEVD. Her show was followed by one in Spanish with mambo bands like La Sonora Matancera. How many Jews kept listening after the Picon program signed off? Were Sholem Aleichem and Uriel Weinreich the salseros of their own culture? I got bat mitzvahed at age 71 at a shul in Brooklyn. I had kosher food at the after-party. And we danced to a mambo band, led by Benjamin Lapidus, a fellow synagogue member.

Willie Colon performing at the Copacabana club. 2024. Photo by Bill Tompkins/Getty Images

Bad Bunny’s “Nueva Yol” couldn’t be more New York. It talks about going to Bear Mountain in the summer. About the Yankees and the Mets. The 4th of July. About Willie Colon, the beloved salsa trumpeter from the Bronx who ran (unsuccessfully) for Congress in 1994 and for Public Advocate in 2001.

Bad Bunny’s halftime performance of “Nueva Yol” also celebrated a Brooklyn matriarch named Maria Antonia Cay, aka Toñita. She runs an intimate social club for Puerto Ricans in Williamsburg where she cooks traditional food, serves it, and tends bar at age 85. She made a cameo appearance at halftime, as Bad Bunny sang lyrics about conflict and anxiety, featuring his signature tic, the phrase “Uuy, uuy!” Go forward in the mouth just a bit and you’re at Yiddish “Oy oy!” At one point he jumped into a joyful mosh pit of dancers. They hoisted him up and paraded him around. It could have been the reception, in any borough, of any Jewish wedding.

There’s a lot of talk these days about Diaspora Jews versus Israel Jews. It’s a topic that’s been fraught for years and inspires endless discussion. There’s not so much talk about Diaspora Puerto Ricans: the people who settled and struggled here decades ago and whose lives became cultural cross-over when Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins and Leonard Bernstein — all Jews — created West Side Story. Today, the New York boroughs, with about a million Jews, constitute the biggest Jewish city in the world after Tel Aviv. And New York City has more Puerto Ricans than San Juan. Bad Bunny’s halftime show reminded us of our shared diaspora. It did so as our bodies grooved, even if they were geriatric bodies grooving slower than before.

Debbie Nathan, who was named one of ‘7 American Jews Who Fascinated Us’ in 2021, is a journalist who has been reporting about immigration for more than 40 years.

This article was downloaded from https://forward.com/culture/804112/bad-bunny-halftime-show-new-york-jews-catskills-resorts/ at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

CULTURE | FEB 9, 2026, 10:50 AM EST | UPDATED FEB 9, 2026, 3:05 PM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

The PBS series ‘Black and Jewish America’ gets it right — except the Black and Jewish part

Robin Washington

The documentary traces years of alliance and rupture — but its false binary perpetuates stereotypes

Henry Louis Gates Jr. and jazz artist Ben Sidran. Courtesy of PBS

The opening scene in the first of four episodes of the PBS series Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History captures a truly wonderful event: a Passover Seder led by culinary genius Michael Twitty that also includes his fellow rock-star Jews of Color Jamaica Kincaid and Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, among others. Rabbi Shais Rishon regales the group with a brief accounting of his Black and Jewish ancestry going back to the 1780s — an origin story that would seem to offer a natural entry point into the history of Black and Jewish life in America, at least through the 20th century.

Except we never hear from him again — or any other Jew of Color seated at that table.

What we do get in the four-hour series presented by Harvard historian and Finding Your Roots host Henry Louis Gates Jr. is a reductive depiction of the histories of Blacks and Jews as two separate groups. That’s despite the incessant reminder that I, and countless other Jews of Color, including those seated at that Seder table, have been making for decades: “Blacks and Jews” is a misnomer. The two are not mutually exclusive. Jews can be Black and Blacks can be Jews — and you cannot talk about the relationship between the two without acknowledging those who inhabit that intersection and have been influencing each group’s attitudes about the other for millennia.

Someone who has lived in both of those spaces all his life is University of Connecticut philosophy professor Lewis Gordon, who describes the binary as endemic in academia.

“They’re really invested in an ongoing stereotypical discourse, in which Blacks are represented by Christians and Jews are represented by whites,” he said. “Ultimately, they’re always talking about it as ‘Blacks and Jews,’ even when Black Jews are in the room.”

20th Annual Conference, NAACP group photo. Sitters include W.E.B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Walter White, William Pickens, Arthur Spingarn, Daisy Lampkin, and Robert Bagnall. Courtesy of Library of Congress via PBS

To be sure, there are other Black Jews in the program’s interview rooms, including Rabbi Capers Funnye of Chicago’s Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation. But Funnye is one of many luminaries asked to comment on facts, incidents, or dynamics specific to one or both of the communities, rather than on the history of his own: a historically rich congregation that has served as a bridge between largely Black Israelite groups and predominantly white Jewish denominations.

And Funnye aside, Israelites aren’t mentioned at all, even as Israelite communities have crossed paths with mainstream Jewish congregations around the country for more than 150 years — a history the producers told me they were aware of but didn’t have the time or space to address.

“The Hebrew Israelite community is so complicated in and of itself that it felt almost like we could only bite off just the smallest piece of it,” co-producer Sara Wolitzky told me over Zoom. “We didn’t want to get that wrong, because it’s such a complicated set of experiences in its own right.”

That may be, but that’s like saying Jerusalem is claimed by both Jews and Palestinians; let’s talk about Tokyo instead.

As for that binary discussion, the series is competently told and offers deep dives into areas not widely covered in other Blacks-and-Jews works. In particular, it recognizes that Black and Jewish allyship wasn’t always a one-way street, in which more privileged Jews came to the aid of downtrodden Blacks. In the early 20th century, it notes, Black newspapers editorialized against pogroms in Europe and against the rise of Nazism.

The vein continues with the recording of Billie Holiday’s anti-lynching standard, “Strange Fruit,” though in a curious understatement it describes its Jewish songwriter Abel Meeropol — writing as Lewis Allan — as a schoolteacher, rather than as the fiercely progressive adoptive father of the sons of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg who also wrote lyrics for Paul Robeson.

A lesser-known story the series does allow room to breathe is that of the other Brown v. Board of Education: Esther Brown, a Jewish housewife in Merriam, Kansas, whose successful school-desegregation efforts in partnership with African American parents helped lay the groundwork for the landmark 1954 Supreme Court case — named, as it happens, for a different Brown.

To each of these peaks of progress and partnership are valleys of dispute and discontent. Jewish support of Black entertainers was often accompanied by economic exploitation; Jews fighting against restrictive covenants were undermined by others building whites-only Levittowns.

The alliance reached its zenith, of course, in the Civil Rights Movement, though the program largely confines that story to the 1960s, omitting crucial Black-Jewish collaborations that preceded it — including that of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his Jewish adviser and fundraiser, Stanley Levison. And while it briefly mentions one Black Jewish civil-rights leader, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee chairman Chuck McDew, he’s described as a “Jew by choice” — a moniker not used in reference to Jews in the program void of melanin.

At least he’s included. Sammy Davis Jr., who was also intensely involved in the movement, is nowhere to be found.

“Sammy Davis was a convert, right?” Wolitzky said, suddenly imposing a standard that apparently wasn’t a problem when talking about McDew, whose Judaism very much informed his decision to become a movement leader. “When you’re talking about Black Jews or Jews of African descent, there are so many different versions of that. Highlighting only one example like a Sammy Davis Jr. can misrepresent that.”

I’m sorry. You can laugh at, laugh with, or make one-eyed–Black–Jewish–Nixon-loving jokes all you want about Sammy, but you can hardly deny he was a major force in bringing awareness to the entire world — let alone to Blacks and Jews — that a person could be both, and proud of it. There is no way to deny his existence shaped the attitudes of both Blacks and Jews about the other.

Following the movement came the inevitable breakup, with Civil Rights morphing into Black Power and white activists expelled. A particular flare-up is highlighted in New York’s Ocean Hill–Brownsville school dispute between largely Jewish teachers and Black parents. Yet again, a key figure in that conflict who would later become a Black Jewish darling of mainstream Judaism is missing: Julius Lester, who during the dispute was accused of stoking antisemitic flames on his radio show before his Conservative conversion two decades later.

The series finally does return to Black Jews in the final episode, briefly, to recount Israel’s airlift of Ethiopian Jews in the 1980s, an act presented as if a more than 2,000-year-old community had suddenly been discovered. That segues into the revelation that there are Black Jews in America, and that it is suddenly acceptable to be one — a conversation that is quickly swallowed up by euphoria over the biracial phenomenon of Barack Obama.

If it sounds like I’ve been incessantly harping on where are the Black Jews?, co-producer Phil Bertelsen expressed exactly that.

“Do you have any questions beyond that?” he asked.

I did. I was curious about the mechanics of the production, and whether or not he and Wolitzky had documented how many times they showed the alliance holding hands versus reaching for each other’s throats.

“I didn’t count them,” he said.

Viewers don’t have to either; we get the point. It’s “I love you,” “I never want to see you again!” “I love you…” and on and on. And in that, the series is instructive. What’s missing is a strong summation that countless others who have written about the perpetual Black-Jewish makeup-and-breakup ritual have noted: If the two communities didn’t truly care for each other, they wouldn’t be talking about each other so much.

That’s something nearly every Black Jew I’ve ever met would tell you — including the ones at the Seder table. It’s too bad they didn’t get the chance.

Robin Washington is the Forward’s Editor-at-Large. A longtime editor, columnist, radio host and documentarian across mainstream and ethnic media, he was one of the founders of the Alliance of Black Jews and an early pioneer of the term “Jew of color.”  Email [email protected], X @robinbirk.

- @robinbirk

This article was downloaded from https://forward.com/culture/803818/black-and-jewish-in-america-pbs-series-review/ at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

Table of Contents

The Forward: 2026 Feb 10

News

NCJW names new leader as group steps up work on Israel, antisemitism

Proposed laws aim to test the Supreme Court’s ban on public school-sponsored prayer

Opinions

In Trump’s instinct to punish and desecrate, a rejection of the values of King David

Why the Super Bowl antisemitism ad uses a familiar slur

Culture

Why Bad Bunny’s halftime show delighted New York Jews of a certain age

The PBS series ‘Black and Jewish America’ gets it right — except the Black and Jewish part