WASHINGTON — For Benjamin Netanyahu, the world just got a little smaller. 

Israel’s prime minister has long touted his worldwide network of relationships and years of experience working with foreign leaders. But now that the International Criminal Court has issued a warrant for his arrest, he’ll face incarceration if he sets foot in countries where he once strode with ease. 

In 1996, he was the first Israeli prime minister ever to visit Ireland. Now, the country has pledged to abide by the warrant if Netanyahu lands there. 

In 2016, the Dutch prime minister extended a “warm welcome” to Netanyahu as the two leaders stood side by side in Amsterdam. On Thursday, the Netherlands pledged to arrest him if he returns. 

The United States, like Israel, is not a party to the ICC, and has condemned the warrants against Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. 

But the same cannot be said of its neighbor to the north: Canada, which once exported tens of millions of dollars’ worth of arms to Israel, has now said it will abide by the ICC warrant as well. 

The countries’ pledges put Israel, which has long feared the prospect of international boycotts, in uncharted waters. On Thursday, the ICC issued warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, charging them with war crimes and crimes against humanity over Israel’s conduct in Gaza. It also issued a warrant for Mohammed Deif, a Hamas commander believed to be dead. 

The warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant were themselves an unprecedented step. But it quickly became clear that the warrant for the prime minister also carried concrete consequences for Israel’s standing in the world — and even among countries it considered allies. Aside from damaging Israel’s foreign relations, the warrant puts a serious crimp on Netanyahu’s ability to travel as he seeks to defend the country’s conduct in its multi-front war.

“This may boost Bibi’s hometown cred and bunker mentality, but Israel is now a pariah,” tweeted Shai Franklin, a former top staffer for Jewish organizations who now works as a government consultant, using Netanyahu’s nickname.

In addition to Canada, the Netherlands and Ireland, Switzerland has also said it will abide by the warrants.  A number of other Western countries, including Britain, France, Italy and Sweden, remained non-committal. Others that are led by conservative ideological allies of Netanyahu — including Austria, Argentina and Hungary — have said they will ignore the warrants.

More than 120 countries — a majority of the world — are signatories of the statute establishing ICC. In principle, that means Netanyahu and Gallant risk arrest if they travel to any of them. But in reality, the countries are split.

Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, framed his agreement to comply as other countries did — less in agreement with the court’s conclusions and more as a matter of abiding by international law.

“As Canada has always said, it’s really important that everyone abide by international law,” Trudeau said in a press conference. “This is something we’ve been calling on from the beginning of the conflict. We are one of the founding members of the International Criminal Court, International Court of Justice. We stand up for international law, and we will abide by all the regulations and rulings of the international courts.”

Switzerland also said, according to Reuters, that its obligations under the 1998 Rome Statute, which established the ICC, required it to abide by arrest warrants.

Other countries were less definitive. Officials in France and Britain recognized the independence of the ICC, but declined to say whether they would act on the warrants. 

A spokesman for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the court “the primary institutional institution for investigating and prosecuting the most serious crimes in relation to international law,” according to The Telegraph, but added that “Israel has a right to defend itself in accordance with international law. There is no moral equivalence between Israel, a democracy, and Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah, which are terror groups.”

Argentine Prime Minister Javier Milei, a staunch ally of Israel’s, decried the warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant as “an act that distorts the spirit of international justice.” Milei added in his statement, “This resolution ignores Israel’s legitimate right to defend itself against constant attacks by terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah.”

A statement posted by the Hungarian ambassador to the United States, on behalf of the country’s Foreign Ministry, said the decision “brought shame to the international court system by equating the prime minister of a country attacked with a diabolical terrorist attack and the leaders of the terrorist organization that carried out the diabolical attack.”

The warrant for Netanyahu’s arrest comes more than a year after the ICC issued a warrant for the arrest of Vladimir Putin over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Countries have been split over enforcing that warrant as well — Putin traveled to Mongolia, a signatory, without incident — but U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged all of the parties to the ICC to “fulfill their obligations” to the court when it comes to Putin. 

In Israel’s case, the Biden administration has criticized the decision, and President-elect Donald Trump is likely to go further: In his first term, he sanctioned the ICC for contemplating cases against American personnel. Biden removed the sanctions, but Trump’s incoming national security adviser, Mike Waltz, hinted on X that they may be invoked again. “You can expect a strong response to the antisemitic bias of the ICC & UN come January,” Waltz said. 

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally, said he would introduce legislation to take action against countries that abided by the warrants. 

Such a law already exists, passed in 2002 after the United States invaded Afghanistan in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attack. It says the president can use “all means necessary” to free a U.S. citizen or a citizen of an allied country held on a warrant issued by the ICC. One nickname for the law is “The Hague Invasion Act,” and Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican, suggested that it could be more than a nickname.

“The ICC is a kangaroo court and Karim Khan is a deranged fanatic,” Cotton said on X, referring to the court’s chief prosecutor. “Woe to him and anyone who tries to enforce these outlaw warrants. Let me give them all a friendly reminder: the American law on the ICC is known as The Hague Invasion Act for a reason. Think about it.”

This article was produced as part of JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives.

Jewish men often accessorize with yarmulkes; Texan men sometimes accessorize with guns. If a man is both Jewish and Texan, you might find him in synagogue with both, a scenario that creates a unique environment for Jewish Texan teenagers to learn and to develop thoughts about guns. 

While Jews across America have the lowest gun ownership rate of all religious groups, some Jews in Texas approach the issue of guns differently. 

“They all carry guns in their suit pockets,” Max Levin, 15, said of the men at his Orthodox synagogue in Dallas, Texas. He said that they carry “for safety,” which, to him, is needed in a post-Oct. 7 world of increasing antisemitism.

Many of the Jewish Texan teens JTA talked to appreciate their state’s gun culture in light of the aftermath of Oct. 7, the Hamas attacks in Israel that sparked the war in Gaza and led to an anti-Israel and often antisemitic backlash in the United States and elsewhere. It’s one out of many factors shaping their stances on guns. Local Jews also have vivid memories of the 2022 crisis at Congregation Beth Israel in nearby Colleyville, Texas, when a gunman took synagogue members hostage. 

“My whole family never thought about owning a gun before Oct. 7,” said Evelyn Benloulou, 14, who moved to Canton, Texas from Los Angeles in 2021, then relocated to Dallas in 2023. Following the events of Oct. 7, her parents took gun training/safety courses and bought guns, which Benloulou said they never would have done in L.A. Benloulou attributes her family’s gun ownership (and her plan to someday own a gun) to a combination of the effects of Texas gun culture and rising antisemitism.

Despite, or perhaps as a result of, living in a state famous for its lack of gun restrictions and growing up Jewish amid widespread antisemitism, these teens approach guns with complexity and nuance. They come from diverse backgrounds, attend various high schools and identify with different Jewish denominations, but their perspectives share some common, complicated themes.

Almost none of these teenagers live in households with guns, yet almost all of them plan to own guns in the future. All of them agree that gun ownership is an American right, while also agreeing on the need for some form of regulation. Many of them see a Jewish connection to their beliefs, but none of them say that only their Judaism drives their position on guns.

Many of them have shot guns themselves and/or been to gun training courses, yet they all still acknowledge that handling a gun comes with power, responsibility and potential for harmful consequences.

Benloulou, like other teens JTA talked to, feels safer at synagogue with armed guards at the door. 

“They’re keeping the synagogue safe and that does make me feel more comfortable,” said Benloulou, because “a gun is really the best way to fight back” and “protect the Jewish community,” an attitude expressed by many teens.

“Gun ownership has this feeling of security that isn’t really provided right now,” said Tannah Levin, 16, from Dallas, Texas. She and her younger brother, Max, used to attend Jewish day school and now attend public high school. Said Max: “Recently, when I think of guns and Judaism, I think of Oct. 7.”

Max and Tannah were born in Australia (a country that strictly regulated firearm ownership following a mass shooting in 1996). They moved in 2016 to Dallas, where the prevalence of guns gave them a culture shock. Guns, a rare sighting in Australia, can be spotted often in Texas, where 45.7% of adults in 2021 said they live in homes with guns, according to the RAND Corporation.

Her family does not own guns, but after growing up in Texas, Tannah plans to own a gun in the future because “it provides a feeling of safety and comfort.” Her brother feels similarly. Even so, both Levins think of guns as harmful objects and say that their stance depends on local gun laws and culture. As Max said, “I’d only want to own a gun since other people are allowed to as well.”

Native Texas teens JTA talked to say they feel significantly more attached to their constitutional right “to keep and bear arms.”

“I believe in the Second Amendment,” said Jonah G., 15, a former Jewish day school student who currently attends public high school. He was born and raised in Dallas, which he said is why he feels comfortable around guns. He asked that his last name not be used out of fear that others’ judgment of his views might negatively impact his future. 

Carrying a gun is “definitely a statement piece,” Jonah G. said, but not necessarily a bad one. Though his family does not own guns, he plans to own one as an adult, because, he said, “it’s very important to be able to protect the people I love.” The Jewish teenagers JTA talked to frequently used the word “protect” to describe their stance on guns.

“The criminals are always going to get guns,” said Jonah G. “So I would feel a lot safer knowing that I had a means of protection.” He said that guns in the right hands make him feel safer, but added that “determining the right hands is a lot trickier.”

To be sure, not all Texas teens support the state’s loose regulation of firearms. Students were among the demonstrators who came out to protest when then presidential candidate Donald Trump addressed the National Rifle Association convention in Dallas in May. The protesters noted the toll of mass shootings in the state — including the massacre in 2022 at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, when 19 kids and two adults were killed by a teenager with an AR-15 — and statistics noting that nearly 60% of gun deaths in Texas are suicides.

Tali Gubin, 17, who attends a Modern Orthodox day school in Dallas. spoke to JTA about the importance of gun control and the necessity of discussing the risks, especially with children, before bringing a gun into the house.

“It’s a tragic thing if someone is messing around with something they don’t know the full capacity of,” said

Gubin, who moved to the Dallas suburb of Plano from New York in 2018, observed how many Texans regard hunting trips with their children as “almost like a coming of age thing here…a celebrated thing.” (Texas issued approximately 1.2 million hunting licenses in 2021, or about one for every 25 people.) 

Even though Gubin’s family does not own guns, and she herself does not plan to, due to her anxiety with handling one, she supports the right to own guns, saying that “people should get to defend themselves and feel secure.”

Self-defense has deep roots in Judaism. “If someone comes to kill you, rise and kill him first,” advises the Talmud (Sanhedrin 72a:4), the set of rabbinic commentaries that form the basis for Jewish law. The sages allow and even encourage self-defense in situations such as homeowners fighting back against trespassers. This concept contributes to many teens’ understanding of self-defense: Benloulou and Gubin both say that while Judaism forbids needless violence, it provides an exception for protection against harm.

The teens also seem aware of the many Jewish teachings about the preciousness of life and the responsibility to sustain it. Gubin refers to the idea that God created humans “in the image of God” (Genesis 1:27) and highlights the Jewish prohibition against self-harm (based on Deuteronomy 4:9). 

Many rabbis and Jewish organizations express this tension in traditional Jewish thought when debating gun ownership. “Jewish tradition recognizes that every life is sacred; at the same time, some of our texts balance the right to own weapons with the safety prescriptions necessary to assure that the innocent are protected,” said Rabbi Amy Wallk Katz, a Conservative rabbi in Springfield, Massachusetts, in a written statement to JTA, reiterating the views she expressed in a 2013 Moment magazine article. She emphasizes the need to protect life, which was created in the Divine Image, while acknowledging Talmudic allowances for self-defense. 

Ultimately, Wallk Katz concludes that whether a Jew should support or oppose gun rights “depends upon the individual’s application of Jewish sources to our situation today.”

In the same Moment symposium, Rabbi Irving “Yitz” Greenberg, a Modern Orthodox theologian, said the proven dangers of gun ownership outweigh the obligation of self-defense. “In practice, Jews should restrict — ideally, prohibit — carrying guns because this is a life-threatening practice,” he wrote. 

A number of the largest Jewish groups have advocated for stricter gun control, including the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and Jewish Women International. JWI in particular notes the toll of guns in gender-based violence. “The biblical commandment [is] to not stand idly by when your community member is experiencing violence,” said Meredith Jacobs, CEO of JWI, in a written statement to JTA. 

The Jewish Texan teenagers JTA talked to can see both sides.

“Guns can be very powerful, very dangerous,” Jonah G. said, “but they can also be used for good.”

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant based on allegations that they starved Palestinian civilians in Gaza during Israel’s war against Hamas.

The court on Thursday also issued an arrest warrant against Mohammed Deif, the Hamas military chief whose death has been reported but is not confirmed.

The Hague-based court’s pre-trial chamber decided to issue the warrants based on a recommendation in May by its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan. The court said in a statement that it “found reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Netanyahu and Mr Gallant bear criminal responsibility for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare.”

The court added, “There are reasonable grounds to believe that the lack of food, water, electricity and fuel, and specific medical supplies, created conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of part of the civilian population in Gaza, which resulted in the death of civilians, including children due to malnutrition and dehydration.”

In a statement, Netanyahu’s office called the prosecutions “antisemitic” and likened them to the Dreyfus affair, the late-19th-century prosecution of a French Jewish officer that was revealed to be an antisemitic plot. The affair spurred the modern Zionist movement.

“There is no war more just” than the war Israel has conducted since Hamas launched the war on Oct. 7, 2023, when it massacred some 1,200 people in Israel, Netanyahu’s statement said. “The decision was made by a corrupt chief prosecutor trying to save his skin from serious sexual harassment allegations,” he statement said. Netanyahu was referring to an investigation of Khan on charges of sexual misconduct.

The Biden administration, which has provided Israel with military aid, has also criticized the warrants.

“Let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas,” President Joe Biden said in a statement in May, when Khan sought the warrants. “We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.”

The warrants will require Netanyahu and Gallant to take care regarding where they travel. The United States, like Israel, is not a signatory to the 1998 treaty that founded the ICC, and even those countries signed to the treaty are notoriously lax in whom they choose to arrest based on the court’s warrants. Still, an arrest warrant has caused even the most powerful of leaders to limit their travel; Russian president Vladimir Putin has traveled only to friendly countries since being place under warrant in March 2023 due to Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Gallant will no longer be travelling internationally as defense minister: Netanyahu recently fired him over differences regarding how to conduct the war.

The last time President-elect Trump was in power, he sanctioned ICC officials over plans to charge Americans with war crimes. President Joe Biden has lifted those sanctions, but Republicans in Congress are calling on Trump to reintroduce them when he returns to office, in part because of the actions against Netanyahu and Gallant.

“You can expect a strong response to the antisemitic bias of the ICC & UN come January.” Trump’s incoming National Security Adviser, Mike Waltz, said in a tweet.

A separate statement from the ICC noted that Khan had sought the arrest of Deif and other Hamas leaders. Two other Hamas leaders have since been killed, and Deif is believed to be dead, but because his death has not yet been conclusively determined, the court issued the warrant, the statement said.

Nineteen Senate Democrats backed a failed attempt to block weapons shipments to Israel on Wednesday, a sign of growing criticism of — and division over — Israel in the party.

The three resolutions that came before the Senate, each aiming to block different offensive U.S. weapons shipments to Israel, were put forward by Sen. Bernie Sanders. Sanders, who is Jewish, is seen as the unofficial leader of progressives in Congress and has been calling to stop military aid to Israel for months.

The resolutions were opposed by all Republicans as well as most Democrats in the Senate, including Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a pro-Israel stalwart who is Jewish. The Biden administration, which has sent billions in military aid to Israel, also came out against the measures. 

Those who supported the resolutions said their votes were a way to register symbolic opposition to Israel’s conduct of its war against Hamas in Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands of people. Those who opposed the measures said they supported Israel and did not want to block aid to an ally. 

A resolution to block tank munitions was voted down 79-18; another aimed at mortar ammunition 78-19; and a resolution aimed at blocking guidance systems for bombs fell 80-17. Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin voted present on all three. The votes represented around one-third of the Democratic conference in the Senate. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Senate’s number-two Democrat, voted in favor of all three. 

The 19 senators who voted for at least one of the three resolutions included two Jews alongside Sanders: Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Jon Ossoff of Georgia. Ossoff’s support of two of the three measures was particularly notable because he represents a swing state with a sizable Jewish community that he is close to.

Ahead of the vote, the resolutions divided Jewish groups. The liberal Israel-focused lobby J Street encouraged senators to vote for the resolution, marking a shift to the left for the organization. Americans for Peace Now also expressed support for the resolutions. Groups such as IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace that have been harshly critical of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, and that have accused it of genocide, also supported the resolutions.

A range of centrist and conservative Jewish groups lobbied against the legislation, including the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, the Republican Jewish Coalition, the Jewish Democratic Council of America, the Orthodox Union and the Jewish Federations of North America.

Both sides said the vote advanced their goals. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee said on X that to support the resolutions would have been a vote “to prolong the war, not shorten it.”

“We applaud the majority of the Senate for rejecting these anti-Israel resolutions and sending a clear message that America stands with Israel against our common enemies,” the group said.

After the votes, J Street CEO Jeremy Ben-Ami said in a statement, “This vote marks a milestone in the ongoing evolution of the US-Israel relationship.” 

He added, “This debate and vote signify another step toward a relationship in which the US can hold Israel accountable for its actions and its use of the weapons we provide.” 

Sanders introduced the resolutions in September. He supported Israel’s war against Hamas after the terror group’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack, but has called for a halt to military aid for Israel for nearly a year. In January, he said, “The U.S. should not provide another nickel to the Netanyahu government unless there is a fundamental change in military policy and their response to the humanitarian crisis.” He has repeated variations on that demand in the months since. 

In a Tuesday press briefing, Sanders argued that the weapons sales were illegal according to U.S. law because, he said, Israel was in violation of international humanitarian law due to its conduct in Gaza. He said that should preclude the arms sales, which are worth about $20 billion and include several categories of offensive weapons and aircraft. 

In October, the United States threatened to cut military assistance if Israel did not meet certain benchmarks in delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza. But the government took no action when the deadline passed last week, saying Israel had made progress in delivering more aid despite not achieving all of the benchmarks.

Citing that warning, the dovish rabbinic human rights group T’ruah likewise backed halting offensive weapons shipments to Israel in recent days, though it did not mention the Sanders resolutions.

Those opposed to the resolution said Israel continues to face myriad threats in its multi-front war. 

“Israel is surrounded by enemies dedicated to its annihilation from Hamas to Hezbollah to the Houthis to most threateningly of all, Iran,” Schumer said, according to The Hill. “These threats have been for a long time and will persist for many years into the future.”

Also Wednesday, in a show of support for Israel from Washington, the U.S. mission to the United Nations vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution that demanded a ceasefire in Gaza. The United States voted against because the ceasefire was not conditioned on the release of Israeli hostages.

UPDATE: On Thursday morning, the House of Representatives passed this bill by a vote of 219 to 184, with 15 Democrats joining the vast majority of Republicans in the “yes” column. The bill now moves to the Senate.

A coalition of more than 55 centrist and progressive Jewish groups is lobbying against a bipartisan bill that would give the Treasury Department broad powers to revoke the tax exemption of any nonprofit it deems to be a “terrorist-supporting organization.”

The Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act is slated for a vote in the House of Representatives Thursday. Last week, the bill was fast-tracked for a vote but failed to achieve the required two-thirds majority for advancement as many Democratic lawmakers argued the bill could be abused by the incoming Trump administration. 

Now, the bill will need only a simple majority before being sent to the Senate for consideration. The bill appears to have the support of nearly all Republicans and enough moderate and pro-Israel Democrats to pass the House. 

If the bill becomes law, the person charged with its use during the next administration could end up being Marc Rowan, one of Donald Trump’s top contenders for Treasury secretary. Rowan, a Wall Street billionaire and a donor to Jewish and Israel-related causes, believes that not enough has been done in response to violence against Jews, especially on college campuses. 

Such concerns have propelled the bill up to now. It was introduced by two Jewish congressmen, Republican Rep. David Kustoff of Tennessee and Democratic Rep. Brad Schneider of Illinois, a year ago, shortly after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack that launched the Gaza war. It gained traction earlier this year amid allegations that many pro-Palestinian nonprofits, especially those involved in campus protests against Israel, have financial links to Hamas or other Middle Eastern terrorist organizations at war with Israel. 

An earlier version of the legislation passed in the House in April by a 382-11 vote before stalling in the Senate. The version that is now up for a vote is almost identical. Supporters say that existing laws barring nonprofits from supporting terrorism are too cumbersome and that the government needs a more efficient tool to dismantle terrorist-supporting financial networks. 

Under the bill, the Treasury secretary would be able to target charities — without having to present evidence of their links to terrorism — and take away their tax-exempt status. There would be a 90-day window for a targeted charity to challenge the determination in court. 

Support for the bill among Jewish groups came from the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC and the Republican Jewish Coalition.

The Anti-Defamation League also supports the bill but appears to be calling on lawmakers to add protections to the legislation. “We would like to see strong due process measures in place when the bill is passed,” an ADL spokesperson said in an email. 

Over the past week, progressive Jewish groups that have lobbied against the bill — including the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, the liberal Israel-focused lobby J Street, and the New Israel Fund — have won over a broader swath of the Jewish community. In a letter to lawmakers Wednesday organized by the Reform group, more than 55 Jewish groups argued that the bill could be abused by the government and have a chilling effect on free speech. 

The letter’s signatories include the Zionist women’s group Hadassah; the National Council of Jewish Women; the Jewish federations representing Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Lexington, Kentucky; the major national institutions of Reform and Conservative Judaism; and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. 

“As a Jewish community, we have experienced the harms caused by those who foment hate and terror,” says the letter, which argues that existing law provides an appropriate avenue through which to address concerns. 

“No individual, including a Treasury secretary, should be given nearly unfettered power to remove an organization’s tax-exempt status,” the letter says. “We urge you to seek solutions that make the nation safer, instead of advancing those that threaten constitutional rights.”

Their critique of the bill echoes concerns voiced by the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights watchdogs. Hundreds of nonprofits focused on progressive issues from the environment to reproductive justice have mobilized against the bill out of concern that the incoming Trump administration could use it to attack them. Pro-Palestinian groups have also mobilized against the bill. 

AIPAC says the concerns are unwarranted and that the bill was crafted to be used narrowly against supporters of terrorism. 

“Unfortunately, this legislation has been badly mischaracterized by its opponents as it is carefully targeted at organizations which actually support U.S. designated foreign terrorist organizations,” AIPAC spokesperson Marshall Wittmann said in a statement. 

Especially since Hamas’ attack,  and the subsequent protests that erupted across the country, many Jewish groups have been busy trying to counter groups whose activism they say crosses the line into harassment. Increasingly, pro-Israel advocates have turned to the legal system. Soon after Oct. 7, for example, the ADL and the Brandeis Center, which offers legal services to Jewish and pro-Israel students, called on university presidents to investigate if their campus chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine were breaking federal law by providing support for Hamas.

A blueprint for a more expansive crackdown on the pro-Palestinian protest movement can be found in the work of Project Esther, a right-wing program for fighting antisemitism written by allies of the incoming Trump administration. Project Esther proposes a legal strategy to target what it calls the “Hamas Support Network,” which includes numerous Muslim and pro-Palestinian groups as well as the anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Peace and major funders of progressive causes like the Tides Foundation and Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

Correction: A previous version of the article incorrectly stated that the American Jewish Committee is among the supporters of the bill.  

Jessica Tisch, a longtime New York City public servant, was appointed as the commissioner of the NYPD on Wednesday.

Tisch, who comes from a prominent Jewish family, will become the second woman to head the city’s police department in its 179-year history.

Tisch, 43, is a 12-year veteran of the largest police department in the U.S. — she was previously the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for information — and was appointed as the city’s sanitation commissioner in 2022. In that role, she prioritized fighting against the city’s rats, going viral for her pronouncements against the rodents.

As police commissioner, a role she will assume on Monday, Tisch said she would work to keep New York “safe and vibrant,” fight crime and disorder, build on the city’s counterterrorism abilities and implement police technology. 

“We will do all of this with integrity as we continue to build public confidence and trust in the police,” Tisch said in a Wednesday statement.

Tisch will be the city’s fourth police commissioner since Adams took office in January 2022. Announcing the appointment, Mayor Eric Adams said Tisch was “one of the most successful managers in our administration.”

Adams said, “To ensure New Yorkers have the ability to thrive in our city, we need a strong, battle-tested leader who will continue to drive down crime and ensure New Yorkers are safe and feel safe, and I cannot think of a leader more up to the task than Commissioner Jessica Tisch.”

Tisch’s father, James, is the president and co-C.E.O. of the Loews Corporation, which her family has led since the 1950s. Her mother, Merryl Tisch, is the former chair of the New York State Board of Regents and chairperson emeritus of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty. The family has a stake in the New York Giants and a hand in some of the city’s top Jewish nonprofits, and its name adorns one of the city’s hospitals and New York University’s arts school. The couple’s foundation distributed $18 million in grants in 2023, mostly to the Jewish Communal Fund.

In 2006, Tisch married Dan Levine, who works as a venture capitalist, in a ceremony at Central Synagogue in Manhattan that was officiated by her grandfather, Rabbi Philip Hiat, a Reform rabbi known for his interfaith work.

Tisch joined the NYPD as a counterterrorism analyst in 2008, the mayor’s office said. She climbed the force’s ranks until she left to become the commissioner of the city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications from 2019 to 2022.

She began her public service career after attending Harvard University as an undergraduate, as well as Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School. “My grandmother was incredibly supportive,” Tisch told The New Yorker. “Everyone else was, like, ‘Really?’ 

The NYPD has about 36,000 officers and 19,000 civilian employees, and a budget of $5.8 billion.

The department is seen as closely tied to Adams, who had a career in the NYPD before entering politics.

The Adams administration has been in turmoil in recent months due to charges of corruption. Adams pleaded not guilty to bribery charges in September.

The previous commissioner, Edward Caban, resigned in September after investigators confiscated his phone in a federal investigation into Adams’ associates. Caban’s lawyers said at the time that he was not the target of the investigation. The subsequent interim police commissioner, Tom Donlon, also became the subject of a federal probe. 

The new banners hanging outside a public building in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, channeled the college town’s history of progressive activism.

One depicted a member of the Chapel Hill Nine, Black activists whose 1960 sit-in at a local lunch counter kicked off protests in favor of racial integration. Another showed a raised fist. A third portrayed a college graduate, clad in the trademark blue of the University of North Carolina, under the words “Good Trouble” — a reference to the famous call to action against injustice from the civil rights hero John Lewis.

For some locals, though, the most eye-catching element of the display, installed earlier this month at Chapel Hill’s Peace and Justice Plaza, was a patch of black-and-white squares drawn over the graduation gown. They recognized it immediately as a keffiyeh, a traditional Palestinian headscarf that has been adopted by protesters on the left, and they saw it as a threat.

“This banner, supporting the student protests, is essentially equating Good Trouble with support for Hamas terrorists going on a murderous rampage, torturing, gang raping, and murdering men, women, and children in their homes in grisly fashion,” Kathy Kaufman, a member of a local Reconstructionist synagogue, wrote to the city.

To Kaufman, who chairs Kehillah Synagogue’s social action committee, and to others in town, the presence of the keffiyeh together with the UNC colors sent a clear message. The banner, and by extent the city, seemed to be endorsing the pro-Palestinian student protesters from the past year. According to Kaufman, some of those “vociferous” protesters began lobbying against Israel in the days after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel; some, she said, openly supported Hamas.

A Chapel Hill native, Keith Siegel, was taken hostage on Oct. 7 and remains held by Hamas.

Kaufman and others in town mounted a letter-writing and advocacy campaign with a single goal.

“What we’re asking is that the banner be taken down,” Kaufman said in an interview on Tuesday. “It’s insulting to us.”

The next day, Chapel Hill acceded to their requests, taking all three banners down. “While I strongly feel that public art should be thought-provoking, I don’t believe it should cause harm,” Chris Blue, the town manager, said in a statement. “And right now, this piece is causing harm.”

The banner brouhaha in Chapel Hill adds to a growing number of instances where the presence of keffiyehs has elicited a sharp reaction from Jews who see them on TV, in grocery stores and on the streets. The keffiyeh’s increasing ubiquitousness has turned up the heat on a simmering cultural debate: More than a year after Oct. 7, should Jews feel threatened by the sight of a person wearing one?

For the Anti-Defamation League — which monitors antisemitism and anti-Israel activity, and maintains that opposition to Israel’s existence is antisemitic — the answer is: not necessarily. “Keffiyehs are not a hate symbol and the presence of keffiyehs has no bearing on whether something is classified as an antisemitic incident,” the group said in a statement.

But many Jews say they experience the garment as an unmistakable sign of the wearer’s antipathy toward Israel and anyone who supports it — attitudes that have accompanied a spike in antisemitic incidents since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

“It creates this sense of wariness, and for some people, the sense that they are in danger,” said Manya Marcus, a Jewish psychotherapist in Chicago and host of the podcast “What Came After,” about the aftermath of Oct. 7.

The clothing item itself has a long history among both Jews and Arabs, with origins in biblical times. Zionist settlers before 1948, including Chaim Weizmann, wore the keffiyeh in an effort to blend in with their new Arab neighbors, according to the National Library of Israel. The keffiyeh became explicitly associated with pro-Palestinian movements when Yasser Arafat, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, began consistently donning it in public in the 1960s and 1970s. Yet for decades following, according to Israeli fashion historian Einav Rabinovitch-Fox, many Jewish Israelis continued to wear them.

Before Oct. 7, the sight of non-Muslims wearing the keffiyeh was decried more often than it was celebrated. In 2021, CAIR lambasted the fashion designer Louis Vuitton for selling a scarf that resembled, and was named after, a keffiyeh, accusing the company of appropriation. Before then, in 2008, Dunkin’ Donuts pulled an ad campaign that featured celebrity chef Rachel Ray after conservative pundits complained that Ray appeared to be wearing a keffiyeh.

Everything changed after Oct. 7, as pro-Palestinian protests swept the globe. Many Muslim groups now encourage allies to don the keffiyeh, and an untold number of people have done so, buying keffiyehs from Amazon and elsewhere to wear to protests and in their daily life.

“If you’d asked me two years ago, I wouldn’t have such a negative reaction,” said Kaufman in Chapel Hill. “I associate it with the Palestinian movement, but I wouldn’t have reacted, necessarily, the way I did.”

Since Oct. 7, some conservative commentators have compared progressive members of Congress to Nazis for wearing keffiyehs; three staffers at New York’s Noguchi Museum said they were fired in September for wearing keffiyehs to work; and a singer in Toronto received backlash for performing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at a National Hockey League game while wearing a sweater that resembled a keffiyeh. (A couple months earlier the signer, Kiana Ledé, had reportedly disinvited “Zionist” fans from her concerts.)

In Georgia, a public school equity coordinator who had previously faced an investigation over his commentary on the Israel-Hamas war invited further scrutiny when he wore a keffiyeh on the one-year anniversary of the attacks.

Marcus summarized how Jews in her circle often look askance at someone wearing a keffiyeh: “Is this a fad, or are you very well aware that this is a garment that was worn by people who raped, brutalized, beheaded, butchered people like me?”

For some Jews, the question comes with an unambiguous answer. Over the summer, Eleanora Kogan, a Jewish longtime member of the Park Slope Food Co-op in Brooklyn, was working a volunteer shift at the co-op’s checkout counter when, she said, people wearing keffiyehs approached her. The sight immediately terrified her.

“I just completely went into panic mode, like a panic attack,” Kogan told JTA. “My hands started shaking, I had trouble breathing. I felt like I was going to start crying.” She told the people she couldn’t help them and left her post, unable to even look them in the eye. Her supervisors became angry, and the incident — which resulted in her being booted from her shift — is now part of a growing legal battle between the co-op and some of its Jewish members who are pressing harassment complaints against staff and management.

Recalling the incident months later, Kogan surmised, “Obviously I was triggered.” She added that, as far as she was concerned, there was nothing else the keffiyeh can stand for except “a symbol of terror” and said she had reacted to “the obscenity of somebody shoving a keffiyeh in my face, as a Jew.”

The co-op wasn’t the only place where Kogan felt herself having visceral reactions to the sight of a keffiyeh. At a diner in upstate New York, she recalled feeling like she had to move tables after a family wearing keffiyehs entered and sat near her. “I just wanted to vomit,” she recalled. “I was so upset. … I thought, ‘I can’t go through life feeling like this.’”

Last month The Weather Channel also became engulfed in the keffiyeh culture wars. Following pushback from watchdog social media account StopAntisemitism, the cable channel pulled a subway ad showing a picture of a young woman wearing a keffiyeh. On X, StopAntisemitism had declared the garment “a symbol now associated with violence against Jews post 10/7.”

In a subsequent apology, the channel said the ad had been a “mistake” and added, “We certainly don’t support or condone any form of antisemitism.” (The Weather Group, the channel’s parent company, did not return a request for comment.)

The ADL has experienced keffiyeh whiplash of its own. CEO Jonathan Greenblatt drew fire after he seemed to compare wearing a keffiyeh to wearing a swastika armband during an MSNBC appearance this spring.

“People who say, ‘Death to Zionists, I wish for that and worse’ — if you wouldn’t tolerate it if someone’s wearing a swastika on their arm, I’m sorry, you shouldn’t tolerate it if they’re wearing a keffiyeh,” he said on the cable news show “Morning Joe” in April.

His remarks at the time — a clip of which circulated online with the “death to Zionists” part edited out — prompted widespread anger from Muslim and Palestinian solidarity groups who accused Greenblatt of demonizing the keffiyeh. Dozens of Muslim affinity groups signed onto an open letter condemning Greenblatt’s remarks and calling for his firing.

Keffiyeh wearers, the groups insisted, were not the perpetrators of violent actions, but the victims of them.

“Hate crimes and acts of discrimination against Palestinian-Americans have risen dramatically in recent months. This includes numerous attacks sparked by the public display of the keffiyeh,” the groups, led by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, asserted. “The rhetoric that Mr. Greenblatt and other extreme supporters of the Israeli government have used to smear Palestinian human rights advocates has contributed to this ongoing surge in hate.”

Greenblatt responded by saying his remarks had been taken out of context and that he merely meant to communicate that hate speech should be classified as such even when its speaker is wearing a keffiyeh.

“I don’t believe that the keffiyeh is a hate symbol,” he told the Forward at the time. “Clearly, it’s a cultural symbol with tremendous resonance for people in the Middle East. It’s not a symbol of hate.” A few months earlier, during a speech at Brown University, he had expressed empathy for a Palestinian student who had been shot in Vermont while wearing the article of clothing. (The shooting targeted three students who attended different schools, two of whom were wearing keffiyehs.)

“My Zionism compels me to mourn a Brown student shot in Burlington because he’s wearing a keffiyeh,” Greenblatt told the crowd, according to the Brown Daily Herald. Protesters wearing keffiyehs staged demonstrations against his speech.

For Rabinovitch-Fox, a professor at Case Western Reserve University, the rise of the keffiyeh is testament to the ease of fast fashion protest. She said she recalled wearing a keffiyeh while growing up in Israel and doesn’t see it as supporting violence the way that, say, a Hamas flag at a protest would. But she also said she understood why American Jews would feel “triggered” by seeing keffiyehs given how widely the American left adopted it as a symbol over the last year.

“The power of fashion is that it’s really an easy way to show support or show your politics. And it doesn’t take a lot. You just wear it like it’s a scarf,” she said.

Some of the new keffiyeh-wearers include Jews seeking to challenge support for Israel in their own communities. According to a recent investigation published by the left-wing magazine In These Times, two staffers at an early education center run by Mishkan Chicago, a progressive Jewish congregation, said they were disciplined after wearing keffiyehs to work. They later resigned from their jobs.

In June, two teachers who had just left positions at the Abraham Joshua Heschel School in New York City, a Jewish day school, posted a selfie with a keffiyeh, along with the caption “This is our coming out. #FreePaletine [sic].” The post prompted an email message from the head of school, who wrote, “I am saddened and infuriated that they chose to exit our community in this hateful and disrespectful way.”

That type of drama points to the increasingly common sight of left-wing Jewish activists adopting the garment as a show of solidarity with Palestinians. At college encampments, klezmer concerts, and protests by groups like Rabbis For Ceasefire since Oct. 7, it has not been uncommon to spy crowds of mostly young Jews sporting keffiyehs along with a matching kippah or tallit.

“When Zionist Jews see anti-Zionist Jews like that, that punches a bigger hole in their rhetoric than seeing an anti-Zionist person in a hijab,” said Rifka Handelman, a Jewish anti-Zionist student activist at the University of Maryland who often dons the keffiyeh. They added that the keffiyeh “is very warm and comfy.”

To some Jews, the symbol can feel like more than a rhetorical threat. In August, a Jewish activist group in New York tried to pressure the city’s public school system to ban keffiyehs, arguing they “are not merely cultural garments, they have been adopted as symbols in response to the slaughter of Jews on Oct. 7.”

Many of Marcus’s friends and neighbors, she said, often express a desire to involve law enforcement or other disciplinary measures when they see someone wearing a keffiyeh.

Yet she cautioned that these kinds of outsized reactions could backfire, helping to create an impression of an overly sensitive Jewish community that can’t tell the difference between free expression and a physical threat.

“It becomes mangled,” Marcus said. “What is HR supposed to do with this? What system is there in this country, in this world, where we can call the cops on a shawl?”

Debates like these point to larger Jewish anxiety over navigating the uneasy post-Oct. 7 world of symbols and slogans. “I don’t think a keffiyeh announces that its wearer wants Jews dead. At least the rational part of my brain doesn’t think this,” Phoebe Maltz Bovy, an editor at the Canadian Jewish News, wrote earlier this year. “That said, am I about to make social plans with someone who isn’t even Palestinian, whose reaction to this war is to buy a scarf in support of their preferred team? I think we all know the answer.”

Back in Chapel Hill, Kaufman said she was “grateful” to the city for its decision to remove the keffiyeh banner. “I think it was a good way to handle things in the end,” she said. She also insists her bonafides as a progressive Jew haven’t changed.

“There’s a balance between the tikkun olam, repair the world, in your community and the need to focus on the Jewish world,” she said. “I sort of had a bit of an awakening in the last few years about whether I’ve been pretty neglectful of my own community, which I just assumed, erroneously, was OK. But in fact, we’re not.”

As the war drags on and pro-Palestinian activism remains widespread, Jews will have to continue to negotiate their relationship to the keffiyeh. After her incident in the diner, Kogan has tried to approach the garment with a new attitude.

“I simply have a different mindset now,” she told JTA. “So now, I’m just going to walk past. I see somebody wearing it and I’m going to look the other way. I’m just like, ‘You do you, bless you.’ My mind is much more at peace.”

A man who was arrested in Penn Station in 2022 while preparing to carry out a terror attack against Jewish New Yorkers was sentenced to 10 years in state prison on Wednesday.

Christopher Brown, 23, had traveled to New York City after posting antisemitic messages on social media. Brown was arrested at Penn Station on Nov. 18, 2022, along with Matthew Mahrer, with whom he had planned to carry out an attack and to whom he had paid $650 to buy a firearm in Pennsylvania. 

After the arrest, police found a knife, a swastika armband and a ski mask in Brown’s backpack.

In September, Brown pleaded guilty to the charge of criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree as a crime of terrorism. It is a Class B felony.

In a statement, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg called the sentence “a significant prison term” and added, “I know that the Jewish community in Manhattan is continuing to face rising antisemitism and violent threats, and I want everyone to know that we are using every tool possible in coordination with our law enforcement partners to keep them safe.”   

The attack had been thwarted in part thanks to a tip from the Community Security Initiative, a local Jewish security agency. The group discovered threatening posts by Brown on Twitter, and brought that information to law enforcement.

On the platform, Brown had expressed intent to “shoot up a synagogue,” saying, “This time I’m really gonna do it,” court records and the district attorney’s office said. 

Mitch Silber, the director of CSI, said Brown’s sentencing “underscores the critical importance of vigilance and collaboration in protecting our communities.”

“While justice has been served, this case serves as a stark reminder of the persistent threats our community faces,” Silber said in a Wednesday statement.

Brown also expressed support for Nazism, and considered getting a swastika tattoo over his heart, the district attorney’s office said. He also indicated a desire to imitate the 2019 white supremacist mass shooting at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Brown’s co-defendant, Matthew Mahrer, is Jewish and the descendant of a Holocaust survivor. Mahrer’s attorney has said that he would not want to harm his own people. His case is still pending.

Brown’s sentencing comes amid a surge in antisemitic hate crimes since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. The rate of anti-Jewish attacks has abated somewhat in recent months compared to a year ago, but Jews remain the group most targeted in hate crimes in New York City.

Not every hate crime reported to police results in an arrest or prosecution. The legal standard for proving bias is high, making prosecution difficult. Lengthy prison sentences like Brown’s are rare.

In a separate case, a man who allegedly demanded that “Zionists” identify themselves and leave a crowded subway car in June had some of his charges dismissed in the Manhattan criminal court on Tuesday. That incident took place on the same day as an anti-Israel protest of an exhibit commemorating the Nova music festival massacre.

Anas Saleh, 24, had been charged with coercion and attempted coercion for the incident. Those charges were dismissed, but a charge of disorderly conduct remains. Under New York law, coercion involves a person forcing another to do something against their will, usually under threat.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office expressed disappointment with the decision to drop the coercion charges.

“Manhattan must be a safe and welcoming space for the Jewish community, and this alleged conduct contributed to the climate of fear that many Jewish New Yorkers currently feel on a daily basis,” a spokesperson said. “We are disappointed with this decision and reviewing our legal options.”

Saleh is scheduled to stand trial in January.

In 1971, legendary British actress Judi Dench played Portia in a production of Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice.” In her book about the playwright published this spring, Dench is candid and straight to the point about the play, which centers on a Jewish moneylender: “I think it’s a horrible play.” 

Dench, who would usually joyfully skip to the theater, added that she found herself dreading each performance. “All the characters behave so badly,” she wrote. “Nobody really redeems themselves.”

Written more than 400 years ago, the portrayal of Jews in “The Merchant of Venice”  — namely, the infamous, vindictive Jewish moneylender, Shylock, who demands a literal pound of flesh from the Christian merchant, Antonio — was called “profoundly anti-Semitic” by preeminent literary critic Harold Bloom. The play was even a favorite of Nazi Germany, where, between 1933 and 1939, it was performed 50 times.

And yet, it continues to be performed around the world  — including here in New York with a new, off-Broadway production of “The Merchant of Venice” that will open at Classic Stage Company (136 E 13th St.) on Friday, Nov. 22. 

Given the climate of rising antisemitism since Oct. 7, 2023 — hate crimes targeting Jews in New York City have surged over the past year, according to NYPD data — staging the play in present-day New York City seems like an unusual choice, at least at first glance. But according to director Igor Golyak, his version of “Merchant” — a play Shakespeare wrote as a comedy — challenges Jewish stereotypes by doubling down on them. 

“The purpose of this comedy is to have the audience understand how easy it is to fall into hate,” Golyak told the New York Jewish Week following a rehearsal of the play last week.

Golyak’s “Merchant” offers a meta, comedic and, at times, cartoonish take on the original story. Billed as a “contemporary, spirited” production, it’s set in the present-day, in a nightclub/late-night talk-show setting with a camera pointed at the cast. Antonio (played by “Grey’s Anatomy” star T.R. Knight) welcomes the audience in a humorous fashion: “Tonight, we give you Shakespeare in a new time, a modern time,” he says. “So gone are the fancy tights, and gone are the boys playing women — we have actual real women!” 

“It’s a hard play,” Knight admitted, echoing Dench. 

“[The play] is filled with so much vile, racist ugliness,” he said, adding that “a straight version of ‘Merchant of Venice’” would “border on the impossible” to pull off.

However, as executive producer Sara Stackhouse points out, “We’re doing this version of ‘Merchant of Venice’ in the context of Oct. 7, and what happened in Amsterdam, and the election and a real rise in hatred and antisemitism around the world.” (Israeli soccer fans were attacked after a game in the Dutch capital earlier this month.)

According to Golyak, Shakespeare intended “The Merchant of Venice” to be a straightforward comedy in which good defeats evil. The problem? In the play, “evil” is presented as a loathsome Jew — a detail that was likely far more palatable in 1590s England, which had expelled its Jews 300 years earlier, than to present-day audiences. 

Golyak, who is Jewish and originally from Kyiv, Ukraine, leans into — and by the play’s conclusion, undercuts — the original script’s clear-cut, good-versus-evil plot by exaggerating its use of tropes. For example, as he contemplates loaning money out to Bassanio (José Espinosa) in Antonio’s name, Shylock the villainous Jew (Richard Topol) dons Groucho glasses and a vampire’s teeth and cape, while the Christian heroes at one point slip into Batman masks to defeat him.

“Batman, Superman, you know they’re the quote-unquote righteous ones,” Golyak said. “Of course, I’m being ironic, but that was the initial intention of the play.”

Golyak added that, centuries ago, the actor playing Shylock would don a red wig to echo traditional portrayals of Judas with red hair. And Shylock’s monologues — like the iconic, “Hath not a Jew eyes?” — which are nowadays typically portrayed in an emotional, human light, were once fodder for the audience’s laughter. 

“He was this comic villain,” Golyak said. “So we are going with that until the play turns on itself.”

Over the years, directors have altered the script of “Merchant” to confront its offensive aspects for contemporary audiences. An adaptation that ran last year at the New Ohio Theatre, for example, reimagined the play by focusing on the idea of white supremacy. The previous year, a “Merchant” production in Brooklyn tackled anti-Black racism.

Golyak’s take, however, acknowledges not just the hatred within the play, but also the ease with which audiences can become complicit in that hatred. Nearly every scene has comedic elements, like Antonio’s frazzled, bumbling introduction, or the game show played by suitors/contestants to win over Portia, which lull the audience into a state of enjoyment. “Everyone is having fun, everyone is laughing together,” said Golyak, “and then we fall into supporting the hate.” 

“This play is a comedy, and it’s a blast — until it’s devastating,” Stackhouse concurred. 

Golyak and much of the cast recently worked on “Our Class,” a dark play about the 1941 Jedwabne pogrom, that was performed at BAM in January. For his next work, he wanted to try something lighter — and thus he landed on “The Merchant of Venice.” “I wanted to come at the same theme of antisemitism from the opposite angle, but ultimately arriving at the same depth,” he said.

Broadway veteran Topol said playing Shylock is “a little bit scary for [him] to do” as a Jew. But the role has long been on the bucket list for Topol, who played Tubal alongside Al Pacino’s Shylock in the 2010 production of “The Merchant of Venice” at Shakespeare in the Park. “I’m stealing as much Al Pacino as I can,” he said. 

Shylock’s journey of losing his daughter — who marries a Christian — and losing the money loaned to Antonio leads to a twist ending hinted at by Golyak and cast members that forces the audience to reflect on their own laughter throughout the show. Like in the original, Shylock succumbs to the Christians, but “how we express it is different,” Golyak said. 

Alexandra Silber, who stars as Portia, is no stranger to the theme of antisemitism — she’s played a number of “harrowing Jews” in her career, including Rachelka in “Our Class” and both Hodel and Tzeitel in “Fiddler on the Roof” (twice each). And while she expressed concern over rising antisemitism — pointing to last week’s neo-Nazi demonstration outside a community theater production of “The Diary of Anne Frank” in Michigan — Silber also acknowledged the role that humor can play in combating it. 

“Jews are better than anybody in the world at laughter,” she said. “I think the shoulder shrug, the joyous dancing, the religious ecstasy and the cultural community that laughs together, is why we’ve been able to bear it all.”

Arthur Frommer, whose empire of travel guidebooks led one interviewer to call him the “quintessential wandering Jew,” died Nov. 18 at his home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He was 95.

Starting in 1957 with the bestselling “Europe on 5 Dollars a Day,” Frommer rode a wave of postwar wanderlust among an expanding middle class that had the means and leisure to explore the world in ways once reserved for the very rich. (Frommer later updated the book’s title due to inflation.)

Six decades later his company’s books, some 350 titles, had sold more than 75 million copies. Before his death, he and his daughter Pauline Frommer, the co-president of FrommerMedia and editorial director of Frommer’s Guidebooks, published more than 130 active titles and co-hosted “The Travel Show,” a syndicated radio show; wrote regular syndicated columns, and contributed to the blog for the company’s eponymous online consumer travel website.

“I’ve always regarded travel as a superb learning experience,” he told Hadassah magazine in 2016. “It opens your imagination, expands your consciousness and brings you to understand other lifestyles, cultures, philosophies and theologies.”

Arthur Frommer was born on July 17, 1929, in Lynchburg, Virginia; his parents were Jewish immigrants from Poland and Austria. They lived for a time in Jefferson City, Missouri, before moving to New York City when he was 14. He attended Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn and worked as an office boy at Newsweek. He earned a political science degree from New York University. At Yale Law School, from which he graduated in 1953, he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal.

He wrote his first manual, 1955’s “The G.I.’s Guide to Travelling in Europe,” while serving in Berlin in a U.S. Army intelligence unit. After returning to New York, he joined the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, one of the first “white-shoe” firms to hire both Jews and gentiles.

On his first of many return vacations to Europe, he was inspired to write “Europe on $5 a Day.” Later he enlisted local authors to write an ever-expanding series of guidebooks to Europe and beyond. For many years, according to Frommer, the company’s books made up close to 25% of all travel guides sold in the United States.

In 1977 he sold the brand to Simon & Schuster; in 2013,  he bought it back from Google, which had acquired it the year before.  

In the 2004 raunchy teen comedy “EuroTrip,” an actor playing Frommer meets a group of young travelers who had been using a Frommer guide throughout the movie, and offers a job to the book’s fiercest devotee. For years moviegoers thought the very British character was Frommer himself. Frommer was offered the cameo but turned it down because of scheduling demands.

In the Hadassah interview, he credited his parents, Nathan and Pauline, with inspiring his intellectual curiosity. “My sister, Jeanne, and I both had books no matter how little else we had,” he said. “Respect for education was a part of our Jewish heritage.”

He also described a trip he took in 2011 to his mother’s birthplace of Lomza, Poland, where he located his grandfather’s tombstone and learned more about the vibrant Jewish life there before the Holocaust.

“My whole life, I had heard stories about how horrific Poland was and how happy my relatives were to leave it,” he said. “Being there you saw the other side. They had vibrant communities, gorgeous temples and fertile countryside. For the first time, I realized they had lost something by leaving.”

Frommer’s first marriage, to Hope Arthur, ended in divorce. He is survived by his second wife, Roberta Brodfeld; his daughter   Pauline; stepdaughters Tracie Holder and Jill Holder, and four grandchildren.