(New York Jewish Week) – When guests arrive at the August Wilson Theatre to see the latest revival of “Cabaret” on Broadway, they’re not greeted at the front doors, where they might have entered the last two summers to see “Funny Girl.”

Instead, they’re guided through a dark, narrow side entrance renovated to look like the seedy underground Kit Kat Club of 1930s Berlin, where the show takes place. As ushers hand out free shots of cherry schnapps, guests are welcomed into the theater redecorated to resemble more of a nightclub than a Broadway stage. 

The disorientating, dark and fantastical set is a fitting backdrop for the Kander and Ebb musical about the British “good-time gal” Sally Bowles, the ambiguously queer writer Cliff Bradshaw and the rise of Nazism during Germany’s decadent Weimar Republic.

Occasionally, though, the audience can come up for air when the Kit Kat Club scenes are punctuated with the fated love story between Fraulein Schneider (Bebe Neuwirth), a German boarding house owner, and her tenant, Herr Schultz (Steven Skybell), an older Jewish man and luxury fruit importer.

Though the two characters are some of the lesser known roles in the many versions of “Cabaret” — the plot wasn’t even included in the Academy Award-winning 1972 film — the 2024 revival, imported from the West End and directed by Rebecca Frecknall, places them at the emotional heart of the story. Schneider and Schultz briefly become engaged before Schneider backs out, realizing, after a Nazi attends the engagement party, that she can’t marry a Jewish man. The knowledge of what’s to come — which the audience has but the couple does not — hangs heavy. 

For Skybell, who in the last eight years has been in three different productions of “Fiddler on the Roof” — on Broadway as Lazar Wolf and off-Broadway as Tevye in both “Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish” at the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene and at the Lyric Opera of Chicago — the ability to play an eternally optimistic Jewish man who knows his luck is running out is hard-earned. In the fall, Skybell starred in “Amid Falling Walls at the Folksbiene, a musical that gives life to the songs and poetry written in the Warsaw Ghetto.

“The roles I’ve had the fortune of playing are really deep and investigate what it is to be Jewish in the world. Certainly, playing Herr Schultz right now feels so important — I don’t really identify as a political activist in my life, but I’m feeling more and more called to try and do something and playing Herr Schultz in 2024 is the first step towards really trying to become an active participant in world events,” Skybell told the New York Jewish Week. “The precipice upon which he is standing is the very reason why a Jewish homeland must exist.”

And while this production seems haunted by the attacks on Israel and the subsequent war on Gaza, it isn’t the first time that his performances have been informed by world events offstage.

“When we started ‘Yiddish Fiddler’ in 2018, it really felt like the beginning of shocking antisemitism in Brooklyn, in New York — the Tree of Life shooting [in Pittsburgh] happened while we were doing ‘Yiddish Fiddler.’ It was shocking how antisemitism was making a resurgence in such a way that I hadn’t felt all my life,” Skybell said. “Certainly, Berlin 1930, when just the whiff of Nazism was going on, feels so parallel to what I feel like we’re smelling in 2024 of what could happen, where things might go — and have gone.”

The creators of the 2024 revival, Skybell said, “really highlight the Jewish problem that is in ‘Cabaret.’ They weren’t giving it the short shrift in terms of what the Jewish story is.”

Skybell’s Herr Schultz, who is far afield from the seedy, scandalous dancers at the Kit Kat Club, offers the audience a character to grasp on to. He wants only to fall in love, to be successful and to run his business, which makes him that much more of a heartbreaking character, said the actor. When Herr Schultz meets Bradshaw (Ato Blankson-Wood), who is also staying at the boardinghouse, Schultz wishes him “mazel” — luck — in the new year. 

At the end of the show, Schutlz’s bags are packed, his fruit shop vandalized and his wedding called off. He comes to say goodbye to Bradshaw, who heartbreakingly wishes him “mazel” in his next chapter. 

“In the final scene when Herr Schultz is coming to say goodbye, and that he does bring on his luggage, is just an image that is very resonant for me and I feel like for audience members as well, who just know what it is for a Jewish person to pack their bags, and maybe not know what’s going to happen to their belongings as they embark on a new journey,” Skybell added. 

Another scene that sticks with Skybell is when Herr Schultz comes face to face with the Emcee (Eddie Redmayne) — who symbolizes the cynical zeitgeist of a Germany slipping further into facism — the two share a moment of recognition before Schultz walks offstage. 

“In another production, it could come and go very quickly, without a lot of focus on it. This production just gives it the time to exist, acknowledging what is there and what it means for this Jewish character and for the Jews at this time,” Skybell said.

Compared to “Fiddler,” Skybell said, Herr Schultz’s story is in some ways even more excruciating.

“I know that the creatives wrote ‘Fiddler’ after the Holocaust, but we were always reminded that in 1906 Anatevka, we didn’t want to get too involved with the Nazi Final Solution because that I don’t think was even in Tevye’s bandwidth — six million is not even a number he could fathom,” Skybell said. “In terms of Herr Schultz, with the Nazi ideology that was rampant in Berlin at that time and the antisemitism, it’s much more palpable than it would be for Tevye. In that regard, I think he’s more frightened than Tevye is, if he were to admit it to himself.”

Along with director Rebecca Frecknall, Skybell reached out for advice from his old friend Joel Grey who directed him in “Yiddish Fiddler” and who, of course, had his breakthrough as the Emcee in the original 1966 Broadway musical and the 1972 movie, helping cement the show as one of the greats in the 20th-century American theater. 

“They both said the same thing, that they felt that Herr Schultz and Schneider are the heart of the musical. It is such a phantasmagoria of sensory overload and dancing and singing that this love story, in some ways, becomes the central story to follow,” Skybell said. 

He added that it this is not just because Herr Schultz’s Jewishness makes explicit and tangible the threat of rising Nazi Germany, but also because “in a beautiful way, the older couple are really the are the couple that every audience member can identify with in — we root for them to find love even at this late stage in their lives.”

On April 11, Skybell, the rest of the cast and the audience celebrated Grey’s 92nd birthday by singing to him onstage, where he was also joined by the show’s original composer John Kander. (Fred Ebb, Kander’s longtime professional partner who wrote the lyrics, died in 2004).

“None of us in this current revival would even have a job if it wasn’t for [Grey’s] performance in the original ‘Cabaret.’ His Emcee really galvanized that musical and really set it as an iconic musical — every revival of ‘Cabaret’ is in the wake of Joel Grey,” Skybell said.

As for his own legacy, “If I only ever play Jewish characters for the rest of my life, I would be delighted and I would be honored. I’ve happily been recognized as a Jewish performer. It’s a privilege for me,” he said. “I actually feel now it’s a calling for me to find myself in these stories that have Jewish points of view, because it’s more important now than I think it’s ever been in my life to give voice to the Jewish condition.”

(JTA) — A New York rabbi is reiterating his call for his music not to be sung by anti-Israel demonstrators, after students at Yale University used his song during protests there.

Rabbi Menachem Creditor said he was “distraught” to learn that “Olam Chesed Yibaneh,” a song he wrote after 9/11 that has become a mainstay at progressive Jewish activists, was sung at the conclusion of a seder held by the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace on Yale’s campus. Yale is one of dozens of schools where anti-Israel protest encampments have sprung up in recent weeks.

Yale protesters holding Passover Seder tonight pic.twitter.com/O8kv6uzBqE

— DC (@dcnhvct) April 22, 2024

“Let me be clear: I vehemently object to the song being used in any context that is against Israel or the Jewish people,” Creditor said in a statement. “Those who are using the song in these protests are misappropriating its message of love and support for Israel. I cannot accept its use by the protesters, whose beliefs could not be further from my own.”

Creditor, the rabbi in residence at UJA-Federation of New York, first called for his song not to be sung at pro-Palestinian protests in November, a month into the Israel-Hamas war that began with Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel on Oct. 7. At the time, a member of the non-Zionist group IfNotNow said the group would stop including “Olam Chesed Yibaneh” and a song written by another Jewish musician who objected to its use in national actions calling for a ceasefire, though a national spokesperson declined to answer questions about the songs’ use.

Creditor told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency at the time that he had declined offers of pro-bono legal assistance to curb the use of his song, saying that litigation would give the issue “too much oxygen.” He said he just wanted the protesters to stop — though he recognized that it would be hard to break longstanding habits.

“It’s hard to control the use of your art when it’s already been created,” Creditor said in November. “But it hurts me the worst when I see my song weaponized against my own family’s heart.”

Now, he said in his statement, he sees a continued role for his song in advocacy for Israel at a time when the country is increasingly beleaguered.

“I am extremely proud of ‘Olam Chesed Yibaneh’ and what it represents,” he said. “In these difficult days I will continue to sing it, full voice, to show my unwavering support for Israel and ironclad solidarity with the hostage families and their loved ones still in captivity.”

(JTA) — One of the most prestigious prizes in Jewish book publishing has gone to a nonfiction book that, by suggesting how Arabs and Jews might have learned to live together in historic Palestine, offers a glimmer of hope for a better future.

That’s one way to read “Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict,” by the American-Israeli author Oren Kessler. There other way is to see the events described in the book — a period of military and political consolidation by Zionists and near total rejection of a Jewish state by the Palestinians — as the inevitable harbinger of the bloody impasse of the next 88 years. 

In its announcement earlier this month, The Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature said its top prize, $100,000, was going to Kessler’s book for “its nuanced and balanced narrative on the origins of the Middle East conflict with far-reaching implications for our time.” The annual prize is administered in association with the National Library of Israel.

The book focuses on the period between 1936 and 1939, when Arabs living under the British Mandate rose up against a swelling Jewish population and the Brits in charge. Kessler, who has worked for various think tanks as well as the Jerusalem Post, cites estimates that 500 Jews, 250 British servicemen and at least 5,000 Arabs died in the rioting and the ensuing British crackdown.  

In the wake of the violence, Britain’s “Peel Commission” proposed partitioning the mandate into Jewish and Arab states — while placing limits on Jewish immigration. The Zionist establishment, led by David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann, accepted the proposal; Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem and the de facto leader of the Palestinian Arab community, rejected the idea and called for jihad.

Kessler calls the events “a story of two nationalisms, and of the first major explosion between them.” The Jews would turn the rebellion to their advantage, by professionalizing their military (with Britain’s help), expanding agriculture and industry and moving into the next tumultuous, tragic decade with the confidence that they could withstand Arab resistance. 

The Palestinians, meanwhile, emerged from the revolt weakened politically, economically and militarily. Historians on both sides agree that the failure of the revolt set the stage for what the Palestinians call the Nakba — or “catastrophe” — and Israel’s triumph in its 1948 war for independence. 

Although a work of history, the book landed on the eve of Oct. 7, and inevitably offers fuel for the debates central to the protests and counter protests that followed the Hamas attack on Israel and the Israelis’ subsequent war in Gaza: Are the Palestinian Arabs victims of a “settler colonial project,” or their own failed leadership? Can two people so at odds share the land, either by dividing it or creating some sort of confederation? And might knowing this history bring both sides closer to a resolution?

“This is the more optimistic version of the answer,” Kessler told me last week, when I put the last question to him. “I think my book and this chapter in history is full of ‘what if’ questions. The idea that things could have indeed gone differently and that we weren’t fated for endless conflict suggests maybe they still can go differently in the present and the future.”

What if, he asks, Herbert Samuel, the British high commissioner for Palestine, had appointed a moderate instead of al-Husseini as grand mufti? What if the two-state solution offered by the Peel Commission report in 1937 had gone through? 

“Jews would have gotten less than 20% of the country and there would have been no Palestinian refugee crisis. There would have been no Nakhba in 1948. The Gaza Strip would not be teeming with refugees today,” Kessler said, describing what he knows are unknowable but still strong possibilities.

As a counter to the mufti, who would later line up with Adolf Hitler and further discredit the Palestinian cause, Kessler offers an extensive treatment of Musa Alami, a Palestinian nationalist known for his relationships with the British and the Jews. Alami met several times with Ben-Gurion during the 1930s, suggesting ways in which Jewish national ambitions might coexist within a regional majority of Arabs, with both sides gaining from the economic and public health progress being made by the Jews. 

“Despite diametrically opposed political aspirations they met in an atmosphere of real candor and respect, and they really tried to reach a modus vivendi, to reach some kind of agreement that both sides could live with,” Kessler explained. “Alami was not a peacenik. He does his part for the Arab Revolt, and then some. He’s not opposed to violence, nor is Ben-Gurion. 

“But I do think his personality was kind of the polar opposite of the mufti’s in his ability to hear the other side, to understand the other side and to try to reach a solution. And it gives a glimpse I think of perhaps what could have been had things gone a bit different.”

A pessimist, Kessler conceded, would reject this hopeful vision out of hand. In the book, as in our interview, Kessler strives to view the emerging Jewish state from the Palestinian perspective. “It’s not that difficult to understand that people who were living in a certain land and whose ancestors have lived there for centuries wouldn’t look all that kindly on another people coming in en masse,” said Kessler. “We don’t need a very active imagination to understand that.” 

But the question, he continued, “is how they responded, how they registered their opposition. And with every rejection by the Arabs in Palestine, their position got worse and worse and it continues to this day.”

Kessler mostly leaves it to readers to decide if the lessons of the 1930s are useful in 2024. He’d also like his book to be seen as a lens on a time period that hasn’t gotten its due, at least in English, and one that has “so many fascinating, complex and compelling characters on all three sides of the Palestine triangle: the Jews, the Arabs and the British.” 

They include household names such as Winston Churchill and Ben-Gurion, and more obscure figures like Orde Wingate, the Bible-thumping British military strategist who helped build up the Jewish army and liked to greet visitors in the nude. 

But at the end of the book he returns to Musa Alami, who lived most of the rest of his long life (he died in 1984) exiled from his native Jerusalem, raising money and international support for Arab refugee youths living in Jordan.

In an interview after the Six-Day War, Alami offered both sides a prescient warning that sounds what Kessler calls “a note of hope”: “You are not considering the future — you are only considering the present,” he told the Israelis. “And we are not considering the distant future — only our present suffering. But I do believe, still now, that this country has the makings of peace.”

(JTA) — Hamas released its second hostage proof of life video in a week, this time featuring Omri Miran and Keith Siegel, as pressure mounts on the terrorist group to accede to the terms of a ceasefire and hostage release.

Siegel, 64, is one of several American-Israeli hostages among the 130 or so still held by Hamas. The families of Siegel and Miran, 47, said Saturday through a group representing the families of hostages that they did not oppose media posting and describing the 3.5 minute video.

Both men appeal to Israel’s leaders to end the fighting. “There is at times a sense that things are a mess,” Siegel said. “I call on the prime minister and the whole government to participate in negotiations, to get to a deal soon.”

Miran says, “The time has come to come to an agreement that will get its out of here alive.”

The video comes just days after another appeal by Hersh Goldberg-Polin, another American Israeli being held hostage.

U.S. negotiators say the roadblock to a hostage release lies with Hamas, which has rejected a deal that would trade the hostages for Palestinians held prisoner in Israel and a ceasefire that would last at least six weeks, as well as the entry of humanitarian restrictions with fewer restrictions.

This week, the Biden administration spearheaded a statement from the 18 countries with citizens among the hostages calling on Hamas to accept the agreement. Israel said it was pleased by the statement.

Hamas wants a guarantee that Israeli troops will fully withdraw from the enclave. “We express our disappointment that the statement [by the 18 countries] failed to address fundamental issues affecting our people,” it said in a statement it posted Saturday on Telegram. “It notably omitted the urgent need for a lasting ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of the occupation troops from Gaza.”

Hamas launched the war on Oct. 7 when it massacred hundreds of people inside Israel and abducted more than 250. More than 130 hostages remain, although it is not known how many are alive. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched counterstrikes, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been displaced. International health officials say the enclave is on the verge of famine.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he is determined to go ahead with a planned major operation in Rafah, a city on the Gaza-Egypt border which is believed to be the last redoubt of Hamas’ armed forces, and which is also where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the strip have sought refuge.

Netanyahu has faced mass weekly protests, including on Saturday night, for not doing enough to come to a deal to free the hostages. Yehuda Cohen, the father of Nimrod Cohen, a soldier held hostage in Gaza, on Saturday told reporters that the families’ anger extends to other members of the Cabinet, who are reported to favor more flexibility to achieve a deal, but face resistance from Netanyahu.

“We tell Benny Gantz and Gadi Eizenkot, every hostage who entered Gaza alive and comes out dead, the blood is on your hands,” Cohen said at a press conference in Israel broadcast by the government-run Kan broadcaster. “Netanyahu sabotaged every deal again and again and you were silent.”

In the video, Hamas interpolates the statements by Siegel and Miran, delivered as they sit against a dark background, with footage of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant saying increased military pressure will release the hostages.

Hamas follows those statements with titles in Hebrew saying that has not been the case.

“Military pressure did not succeed in freeing your sons,” one title says. “It killed dozens of hostages held by us and kept dozens of others from celebrating Passover with their loved ones.”

The camera lingers on Siegel as he collapses into tears recalling how much he enjoyed Passover with his family last year. Siegel grew up in Durham, North Carolina.

The video ends with the warning, “Do what is needed before it is too late.”

Siegel’s family released their own video after Hamas released the proof of life. His daughters, Ilan and Shir, urged people to turn out at the protests, which Keith Siegel said he has seen while in captivity.

“Seeing my father today only emphasizes to all of us how much we must reach a deal as soon as possible and bring everyone home,” Elan said. “I demand that the leaders of this country watch this video and see their father crying out for help.”

His wife, Aviva, who was abducted and released in an exchange 51 days later, concludes the video: “Keith, I love you, we will fight until you return.”

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — Inside the University of Southern California Hillel, there were signs of normalcy. Some students were making matzah pizza in the courtyard, while another set up an art installation devoted to actor Larry David. Students and staff discussed plans for the evening’s Shabbat programming.

But outside the building, students only a block away could be heard hawking cookies and other baked goods at their makeshift “Bake Sale 4 Gaza.” Their table was set up next to another booth with a large sign declaring that “‘I stand with Israel’ equals ‘I stand with genocide.’”

And in a plaza a few steps away, the Los Angeles chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace was hosting a pro-Palestinian Passover gathering, complete with Streits matzah and bottles of grape juice. One attendee held a large poster listing the “10 Plagues of Zionist Idolatry.”

The scene on Friday follows a chaotic stretch in which USC canceled the planned commencement speech of its valedictorian, who had drawn criticism for harshly anti-Israel content on her social media. USC then scrapped its celebrity commencement speakers, before announcing Thursday that the entire main-stage commencement event had been canceled. Pro-Palestinian protests broke out on campus, as they have across the country, leading to 93 arrests on Wednesday. Parts of campus now have security checkpoints to enter.

The whole situation, which has garnered international media attention, has led some Jewish students to question their safety on campus. One Israeli-American student, who requested anonymity out of fear of retribution, said she has removed the dog-tag necklace she wears in honor of the hostages to protect herself and has friends who have been doxxed because of their support for Israel.

“We’re keeping our head down, we’re just trying to get through the school year,” said the student, a sophomore neuroscience major whose parents are Israeli. “It’s definitely been hard when there’s helicopters circling 24/7 and your friends are posting hateful things on Instagram.”

The student said the increased attention on USC has made it difficult to focus on school, even as final exams are around the corner.

“Our campus has become such a spotlight,” she said. “It used to be a place where we learned and studied, and now it’s this hotbox of tension and news and all eyes are on us.”

Brandon Tavakoli, a junior and the president of USC’s Trojans for Israel club, said the last few days have been “sobering and quite shocking,” especially because USC is not typically home to the type of activist culture that’s seen as commonplace at schools like Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley.

“We don’t have an organized student activist base, but that has changed in the last week,” Tavakoli told JTA. “I think that was quite shocking for a lot of Jewish students on this campus who aren’t used to seeing the Israel hatred that is shown regularly on a campus like UC Berkeley.”

Tavakoli said the whole episode, beginning with the selection of the valedictorian, was “completely preventable.”

“I believe that if the university did their due diligence, and saw the propagation of antisemitism that this valedictorian has exercised and expressed, we would not be in this position,” he said “Our campus would not be seen as a target for anti-Israel activism.”

Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, visited USC Hillel on Friday to speak with staff and student leaders. Greenblatt said he has visited nearly a dozen campuses in the past few months. (USC Hillel pointed to the statement it posted on Instagram on Wednesday but declined to comment further.)

“Jewish students showed up to learn, to have a college experience, and then find themselves caught in this maelstrom,” he told JTA. “They find themselves deeply affected by the tragedy of Oct. 7, deeply affected by the death of civilians in Gaza. I think they feel generally compassionate about the loss of life on all sides, and yet, really disturbed by these sorts of activities on campus, which are well beyond the parameters of typical protests.”

Greenblatt said the ADL supports free speech and the First Amendment but said he views some of the rhetoric on college campuses as beyond the scope of what universities — and the law — ought to allow.

“Freedom of speech isn’t the freedom to slander people because of their faith, and freedom of expression isn’t the freedom to incite violence against people because of their nationality,” he said. “Free speech, you’ve got to allow for it. But sitting in front of the Hillel and screaming at the Jewish students walking inside for a Shabbat dinner, or a havdalah service and calling them ‘baby killers’ is different.” It was not clear whether Greenblatt was referring to specific incidents.

Greenblatt said universities need to do more to ensure students’ safety, including by enforcing their codes of conduct, prohibiting full face coverings and coordinating with local law enforcement.

Tavakoli said that the way USC, and campuses in general, have treated pro-Palestinian activity compared to pro-Israel advocacy has led to a double standard in the enforcement of free speech.

“I’ve never understood why, when there’s bigotry against Jewish students, we have to bring up a conversation about free speech, but when there’s bigotry against anyone else, we are clearly denouncing it as bigotry,” he said. “It’s personally hurtful that I as a Jewish student have to prove to other people that what I’m experiencing is intimidation, hatred and harassment.”

The Israeli student said that many of the activists who have been involved in protests at USC in recent days are not students.

“Non-students are coming to our campus and just hindering the environment and increasing tension within the students,” she said. “It’s non-students igniting this flame.”

At least some of the participants at the campus’ Jewish Voice for Peace Passover gathering, which drew a few dozen people and took place a block away from Hillel, were not affiliated with USC. The group was gathered around a large cloth canvas decorated with imagery from a traditional seder plate.

Amid speeches and songs, the group also adapted various texts and practices from the haggadah, including the recitation of the 10 plagues while dipping one’s finger in wine. In this version, the plagues had parallel meanings related to the Israel-Hamas war — the water turning to blood, for example, represented the lack of safe drinking water in Gaza.

Benjamin Kersten, a Jewish graduate student at UCLA who helped plan the event, said JVP chose to use Passover to “continue to call for President Biden to take action towards a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.”

Kersten, who was also involved at this week’s protests at UCLA, said he has “a lot of empathy and compassion” for fellow Jewish students who feel uncomfortable or unsafe when they hear phrases like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which was chanted repeatedly at the JVP Passover event. Many Jewish groups believe the phrase is antisemitic.

“I think it’s important that we think about the differences between discomfort and unsafety and hatred,” he said. “I really listen to the words of Palestinians when they say that when they use the phrase ‘from the river to the sea,’ they’re calling for justice and equality for everyone who lives in that land.”

Kersten added: “I would invite people who feel uncomfortable to realize that it’s freeing to actually enter into a Jewish community that recognizes that safety comes from solidarity with all marginalized people.”

Back in Hillel, the matzah pizza making continues. Jason, a junior pre-health student who declined to share his last name, said he chooses whether to wear his large Star of David necklace depending on where he is and who he’s with.

“I’ve accepted the situation, but it hasn’t changed how I think about my Jewish identity,” he said.

Jason said it’s been difficult to navigate the environment at USC in recent weeks, especially as the tension from the protests has begun to seep into the classroom, where he said the conversations used to be much more civil.

For some students, the situation has elicited shock — and even laughter — more than fear.

“I don’t really feel scared, I find it hectic, chaotic and ridiculous,” said first-year Caleb Ouanounou. He said that when he saw the pro-Palestinian protests, “I was both appalled and honestly I was laughing because of how absurd it was.”

And for Tavakoli, with the semester coming to an end, he said he needs to focus on schoolwork, not worry about his safety.

“I have papers and final projects due this weekend. I have to be prepared for my final exams next week,” he said. “I believe that is representative of the experience of all Jewish students on this campus — we just want to be like every other student on campus, like every other Trojan.”

He continued: “It should not be my top priority to be or feel safe. It should be my top priority to be the best student that I can be and close out the semester as best as I can. It’s the university’s top priority to make sure I am [safe] and I feel so.”

(New York Jewish Week) — Gathering at Columbia University on Friday, Jewish leaders defended the right to free speech while demanding universities take action to rein in pro-Palestinian protests that have erupted at the Ivy League school and college campuses around the country.

The protests have thrown Columbia into turmoil in the past two weeks as the administration struggles to control the unauthorized demonstrations and fend off critics who have said they are not doing enough to clamp down on antisemitism. Administrators say they are seeking to preserve the right to free speech and free assembly, while protecting the safety and ability to learn of Jewish and Israeli students and faculty, who have said some protest activities veer into antisemitism and outright threats.

“We celebrate free speech,” the head of the American Jewish Committee, Ted Deutch, said at a briefing at Columbia University’s Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life on Friday.

“But when the debate that’s taking place results in the intimidation and harassment and silencing of one party, there is not free speech for everyone,” Deutch said in response to a question from the New York Jewish Week. That “is free speech only for those who are carrying out this intimidating behavior, this harassment.”

Supporters of the protests have decried what they call efforts to control the demonstrations as an attack on the rights to free speech and free assembly.

“Columbia should not be calling the cops on its own students for engaging in nonviolent protest,” New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, the city government’s highest Jewish elected official, said last week on X after Columbia summoned the NYPD to campus, resulting in more than 100 arrests.

“The university has a long history of respecting free speech on campus, and I support the faculty who are pleading with their administration to continue that tradition,” Lander said.

Adam Lehman, the head of Hillel International, also backed the right to free speech while demanding action to rein in the protests at the Friday briefing.

“Our students are desperate for dialogue, but what is happening on campus today is not about free speech, it’s about wrongful conduct, it is about assault, it is about intimidation, it is about targeted harassment,” Lehman said in response to a question from the New York Jewish Week.

Asked about concerns Jewish institutions could be seen as opponents of free expression, Lehman said, “We can’t control perception,” especially at this moment.

“We are living in a backwards, upside down world,” Lehman said, citing campus protesters supporting “Hamas ideology.”

“It’s hard to trust perception from anyone at this point,” he said.

Hillel International has documented nearly 1,400 instances of campus antisemitism since Oct. 7, and the rate of incidents is increasing, Lehman said.

Jewish students at the briefing said the atmosphere for Jewish supporters of Israel has become fraught to the point that it interferes with their ability to learn, with protesters harassing them on campus and professors altering class schedules or participating in the protests. Columbia’s commencement, scheduled for May 15, is also in doubt, as the protesters have occupied the center of campus where the ceremony takes place.

The University of Southern California said Thursday it had canceled its May graduation ceremony after similar protests and arrests on its campus.

“I cannot walk around my own campus looking visibly Jewish without preparing myself for the possibility that someone might spit on or attack me,” said Noa Fay, a Columbia student.

“To both my university administration and those around the country, help us, your Jewish students, protect ourselves. You know it is the right thing to do,” Fay said.

Fay compared Jews who have joined the pro-Palestinian protests to “Blacks for Trump or gays for Trump.”

“They are not representative of our community,” said Fay, pointing to data that shows the vast majority of Jews identify with Israel.

Deutch, Lehman and other leaders at Friday’s briefing — including Linda Mirels, president of UJA-Federation of New York and Brian Cohen, executive director of Columbia Barnard Hillel — rallied around a similar solution: for universities to enforce their existing policies on protests.

Columbia provides student groups with guidelines that allow protests during designated times at certain locations. Some student protesters have ignored those rules since soon after Oct. 7.

The protests “cannot occur 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in locations where students live and learn,” Cohen said, adding that the existing rules allow protests while providing students with the opportunity to “continue their academic pursuits without fear.”

He urged Columbia to “uphold your codes of conduct, enforce your rules and hold students who violate them accountable in real and consequential ways.” The university was negotiating with the protesters, but the substance of the talks was not known to the Jewish community, Cohen said.

The protests on campus and adjacent to the university have seen demonstrators block Jewish students’ access to the public areas; calls for Hamas to target Jews; call for the destruction of Tel Aviv; and the verbal harassment of Jews with statements such as “go back to Europe” and “all you do is colonize.” Campus protesters said they can’t be responsible for non-students joining the demonstrations on or near the campus.

In video from earlier this year that surfaced this week, one of the student leaders of the protests said “Zionists don’t deserve to live,” sparking outrage. The student, Khymani James, said on Friday that he was “wrong” to make the statements, while blaming “far right agitators” for the opprobrium.

The protesters have demanded the university divest from Israeli companies, cut ties with Israeli academic institutions and issue a statement supporting a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and condemning the Israeli military campaign.

The students set up a protest encampment in the center of campus earlier this month as Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, addressed a congressional investigative committee on antisemitism. The university called in the NYPD to clear the unauthorized demonstration, charging more than 100 students with trespassing and further inflaming campus tensions. Student protesters expanded their demands to include barring police from campus and amnesty for students arrested or suspended over the protests.

The Columbia campus has been largely blocked to outsiders. Shai Davidai, an outspoken and controversial Israeli professor advocating for Jews on campus, had his access to campus restricted last week.

The protest encampments have spread to other New York universities in recent days, including New York University, the New School, the Fashion Institute of Technology and the City College of New York, part of the public City University of New York system.

Jewish members of Congress visited the Kraft Center last week, voicing alarm about the safety of Jewish students and vowing to take action.

Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots and a leading sponsor of the center, on Monday indicated that he was pausing donations to the university “until corrective action is taken.”

Issues surrounding anti-Israel activism came to the fore at Columbia shortly after the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. In October, an Israeli student was assaulted with a stick by a 19-year-old, who was charged with hate crimes. Columbia banned its chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and the anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Peace in November for violating protest policies. The groups remain banned, but continue to operate as the lead groups in a consortium of student organizations.

Last month, student activists hosted pro-Hamas speakers at an unauthorized “Resistance 101” event in campus housing.

In addition to the Congressional investigative committee that questioned Shafik this month, the Department of Education is investigating complaints — by both Jewish and Muslim parties — that Columbia violated the Title VI anti-discrimination law. Jewish students have also filed civil lawsuits alleging discrimination on campus.

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(JTA) — Hello! We’re excited to be back from our Passover hiatus with the latest Jewish sports news. Let’s jump right in.

A stellar week for MLB’s two Jewish aces

Atlanta Braves ace Max Fried produced one of the more dazzling performances you’ll ever see in his Tuesday night win over the Miami Marlins: Fried threw a complete game shutout, allowing only three hits while striking out six.

The most impressive part? He did it all in only 92 pitches, earning the lefty his third career “Maddux,” a feat named for Hall of Famer Greg Maddux that represents the rarity of a complete game shutout in under 100 pitches. According to Baseball Reference, Fried became the 41st pitcher in MLB history with three “Madduxes.” Maddux himself leads the history books with 15, while Sandy Koufax threw five. (MLB added pitch count as an official stat in 1988.)

With Braves star Spencer Strider out for the year with an elbow injury, MLB’s best team will look to Fried, the 2022 NL Cy Young runner-up, to anchor the rotation going forward.

In the American League, Baltimore Orioles pitcher Dean Kremer earned his first win of the season on Wednesday as he struck out 10 across 5.1 innings as the Os beat the Los Angeles Angels 6-5. It was only the second time the Team Israel alum has reached double-digit strikeouts in his 75 career starts.

There must be something in the matzah!

Halftime report

BENCHED. As pro-Palestinian protests continue to spread across college campuses, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft said he is pausing his support for Columbia University, his alma mater to which he has donated millions of dollars. Kraft said Columbia, where the Jewish student life center and a sports field are named after him, “is no longer an institution I recognize.” Meanwhile, at Thursday’s NFL Draft, members of Kraft’s Foundation to Combat Antisemitism were given the honor of announcing the Patriots’ No. 3 overall pick.

BADER MAKES A STATEMENT. New York Mets outfielder Harrison Bader has gotten off to a solid start with his new team, hitting .278 with 20 hits in 20 games. But it’s Bader’s sartorial choices that have earned the 29-year-old clout among Jewish fans. Earlier this season, Bader showed a fan a dog-tag necklace he was wearing in support of the hostages in Gaza, and last week, he was seen sporting a Star of David on his belt.

RIP. Brooklyn Dodgers great Carl Erskine died last week at 97, and my colleague Andrew Silow-Carroll penned a touching tribute for the last surviving member of the iconic “Boys of Summer” Dodger teams of the 1950s. “Erskine’s death seemed to close a storied chapter in New York and, dare I say it, Jewish history,” Silow-Carroll writes.

ICYMI. On the topic of remembering baseball legends, Jewish ace Ken Holtzman, the winningest Jewish pitcher ever, died April 14 at 78. Holtzman threw two no-hitters, won four World Series rings and beat Sandy Koufax head-to-head once across 15 seasons in the 1960s and 1970s.

YIKES. A former Baltimore-area high school athletic director was arrested Thursday and charged with using AI to fake antisemitic and racist comments attributed to the school’s principal.

CASE CLOSED. The Justice Department announced this week that it had agreed to pay nearly $139 million to victims of former Team USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar. Two-time Olympian Aly Raisman has been on the forefront of the legal battle and the broader effort for increased accountability and transparency at USA Gymnastics.

🇬🇧 → 🇮🇱 The Israel-Premier Tech cycling team signed up-and-coming British cyclist Joe Blackmore, a 21-year-old who has four pro wins so far in 2024, including at this month’s Circuit des Ardennes in France. The team is owned by Israeli-Canadian billionaire Sylvan Adams, a philanthropist and cycling champion who has boosted the sport’s profile in Israel.

Jews in sports to watch this weekend (all times ET)

🏒IN HOCKEY…

It’s round one of the NHL playoffs, and a number of Jewish players are seeking a shot at Stanley Cup glory. Adam Fox and the New York Rangers are up 2-0 against the Washington Capitals — Game 3 is tonight at 7 p.m.; Game 4 is Sunday at 8 p.m. Jason Zucker’s Nashville Predators host Quinn Hughes, Mark Friedman and the Vancouver Canucks in Game 3 of their 1-1 series tonight at 7:30 p.m., with Game 4 Sunday at 5 p.m. Zach Hyman and the Edmonton Oilers face the Los Angeles Kings tonight at 10:30 p.m. in their 1-1 series; Game 4 is Sunday at 10:30 p.m.

⚾️ IN BASEBALL…

The recently called-up Matt Mervis and his Chicago Cubs face the Boston Red Sox in a three-game series this weekend. Mervis’s MLB career is off to a slow start, but with Cubs star Cody Bellinger sidelined with a rib injury, this could be the Team Israel alum’s chance to prove himself. Jake Bird and the Colorado Rockies host Alex Bregman and the Houston Astros tomorrow and Sunday. Harrison Bader and the New York Mets host the St. Louis Cardinals in a three-game set.

⚽️ IN SOCCER…

In the Premier League, Matt Turner and Nottingham Forest host Man City Sunday at 11:30 a.m. In the MLS, Daniel Edelman’s New York Red Bulls, Zac MacMath’s Real Salt Lake, DeAndre Yedlin’s F.C. Cincinnati and Steve Birnbaum’s D.C. United are all in action Saturday at 7:30 p.m.

⛳️ IN GOLF…

Ben Silverman and Daniel Berger are both competing at the PGA’s Zurich Classic this weekend in New Orleans.

Relatable

Have you ever found yourself in the kitchen in search of a snack, only to remember it’s Passover? So you (perhaps reluctantly) grab a piece of matzah and hold it in your mouth while you close the box.

I’ve definitely been there. And so, apparently, has Houston Astros star Alex Bregman. Here he is before Thursday’s Cubs-Astros matchup. It seemed to work: Bregman racked up two hits in the game.

Pretty good chance Alex Bregman has a breakout game today and hits his first HR of the season now that he’s got his matza for Passover.

Credit to Richard Silverman on the matza and photo.

CC @MaxMannis @ZackRaab pic.twitter.com/TxZNPy8S5G

— Yoni Pollak (@YoniPollak) April 25, 2024

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Two New York congressmen, a Democrat and a Republican, introduced a bill that would allow the federal government to compel universities to accept supervision from an antisemitism monitor.

The bill introduced Friday by Reps. Ritchie Torres, a Bronx Democrat, and Mike Lawler, a Rockland County Republican, comes in the wake of anti-Israel protests roiling Columbia University. The lawmakers named the bill the COLUMBIA (College Oversight and Legal Updates Mandating Bias Investigations and Accountability) Act.

It would allow the federal government to bring in an outside monitor to oversee how universities accused of allowing antisemitism to fester on campus are dealing with the allegations.

“The monitor would be appointed by the Secretary of Education, the terms and conditions of the monitorship would be set by the Secretary, and the expenses of the monitorship would be paid by the particular college or university that has been selected for monitorship,” said a release from Torres’ office. “Failure to comply with the monitorship would result in the loss of federal funds.”

Torres stands out as a progressive who has been unapologetically pro-Israel. He got a hero’s welcome in the country during a recent visit.

A number of his fellow progressives in the Democratic caucus have decried what they depict as an overreaction by local, state and federal governments to the pro-Palestinian protests sweeping campuses.

Lawler, who has a substantial Jewish population in his district, has similarly been outspoken in his defense of Israel.

WASHINGTON (JTA) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has yet to make a determination on whether the United States will withhold some defense assistance from Israel because of human rights abuses by one of its army’s most notorious units.

A source familiar with the State Department review of alleged abuses by units of the Israel Defense Forces on Friday pushed back against reports earlier this week that Blinken had made a determination to withhold funding from the Netzach Yehuda battalion, which was formed to integrate haredi Orthodox soldiers into the military.

There has been a determination that Israeli forces committed gross human rights abuses, the source confirmed to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, but there is not yet any decision about whether to withhold funds. The review was at the stage of determining whether Israel had applied appropriate accountability and remediation for the abuses. The process is “ongoing,” the source said and, under a U.S.-Israel memorandum of understanding, U.S. officials are consulting with their Israeli counterparts.

Soldiers in the Netzach Yehuda unit have been arrested and jailed for a litany of abuses against Palestinians over the years, including torture and assault.

Israeli officials expressed alarm at news of the alleged determination after it was first reported by Axios.

“If somebody thinks they can impose sanctions on a unit in the IDF — I will fight this with all my powers,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a Passover message. “As our soldiers are united in defending us on the battlefield, we are united in defending them in the diplomatic arena.”

Biden administration officials have been at pains to say that the process is routine under what is known as the “Leahy Law,” named for the retired Vermont Democratic senator who authored it, Patrick Leahy. The law withholds funds from units receiving U.S. defense assistance that have determined to have committed abuses.

“In any country in which we have a security relationship, we will apply the tenets of the Leahy Law fully,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said Thursday in a briefing with reporters. “The law is pretty clear in terms of what those standards are, and those standards are applied across the board to every country in which we have a security relationship with. That will be the case anywhere where we find there to be action or activity that is in violation of the Leahy Law.”

Blinken said earlier this week, unveiling the annual State Department report on human rights, that he would have more to say about the review of Israel’s abuses, but did not say when that would happen.

“This is, I think, a good example of a process that is very deliberate, that seeks to get the facts, to get all the information, that has to be done carefully, and that’s exactly how we proceeded, as we proceed with any country that is the recipient of military assistance from the United States,” he said.

The Israel section of the State Department’s 2023 report focuses on abuses committed by Hamas, particularly on Oct. 7 when it launched the war with massacres of hundreds of people inside Israel.

But it also reports that Israel’s response “had killed more than 21,000 Palestinians and injured more than 56,000 by the end of the year, displaced the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza, and resulted in a severe humanitarian crisis.”

The source familiar with the Leahy review insisted to JTA that the overall defense relationship between Israel and the United States has not been affected by the review.

Under the law, the country receiving assistance is given time to address the abuses.

(JTA) — Israeli police arrested Ayelet Waldman, a Jewish American author, while she was with a group trying to deliver relief to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Waldman, who is Israeli-born, was one of seven people arrested Friday morning at a protest action organized by Rabbis for Human Rights, and one of five Americans. Two were released before Shabbat, organizers said, but Waldman was still in custody at the police station in Ashkelon, a city near the Gaza border.

Her husband Michael Chabon, also a noted novelist, expressed concern about her status on Instagram. “She was there in the company of a group of American rabbis, #rabbis4ceasefire, to show the world, the people of Gaza, and their fellow Jews in Israel, and around the world what Judaism teaches: justice, lovingkindness, peace, mercy, liberation,” he said.

In video Chabon posted, Waldman is seen bearing a bag of rice as she walks toward Erez Crossing, on the northern Gaza-Israel border. A policeman blocks her way and she persists in trying to skirt him.

The other Americans arrested include Rabbi Alissa Wise, a founder of Rabbis for Ceasefire; Rabbi Alana Alpert, a Detroit-area congregational rabbi; Ilana Sumka, a longtime activist and rabbinical student; and Kobi Snitz, a mathematician.

The Israeli police and the Israeli embassy in Washington did not return requests for comment. Miriam Messinger, a spokeswoman for Rabbis for Ceasefire, said that the organizers contacted the U.S. embassy about the arrests.

“We have no higher priority than the safety and security of U.S. citizens overseas,” a State Department spokesperson told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “We are aware of the reports and have no further details to share.  U.S. citizens should heed the Level 4 Travel Advisory to not travel to Gaza.”

Rabbi Andy Kahn, a Brooklyn-based rabbi who joined the protest, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the protesters did not expect to be able to deliver aid to Gaza Palestinians, who are considered by international health officials to be on the verge of a famine more than six months into the war launched Oct. 7 by Hamas.

Instead, he said, they wanted to make a point timed for Passover about the plight of Palestinians who have been displaced by the war.

“Passover is a holiday of liberation and is a holiday which focuses on food and how it is related to liberation,” he said in an interview. “Bringing food aid was a part of our passover observance, in calling attention to need in Gaza, to the need for a ceasefire, and exchange and release of hostages and a permanent end to this conflict.”

Waldman and Chabon are known for their works written and produced separately and jointly. Waldman is known for her 2007 novel, “Love and Other Impossible Pursuits,” and for her Mommy-Track mystery series. She and Chabon are developing a TV series based on his novel, “The Yiddish Policeman’s Union.”

They have also been active for years in the advocacy for Israeli accommodation with Palestinians and with protests critical of Israeli actions.