An American couple who were en route to Israel to celebrate their wedding but had their flight diverted. Two Israeli single mothers on holiday looking for a quick refresh, now stranded. A group of injured Israel Defense Forces soldiers on a healing retreat. 

These are some of the nearly 2,500 Jewish people that Rabbi Arie Zeev Raskin, the chief rabbi of Cyprus, and his wife, Shaindel, unexpectedly found themselves hosting for Shabbat last Friday after at least 32 flights from the United States and Europe were diverted to the island in the Mediterranean amid Israel’s preemptive military campaign against Iran, which was launched early Friday morning. 

“Everybody in the community gave a hand with cooking and preparing,” Raskin, who has run the local Chabad center in the port city of Larnaca since 2003, told Jewish Insider. 

Shabbat at Chabad “was amazing, a crazy experience,” said Tzvi Berg, a Jerusalem resident who was flying home from a wedding in New York on Thursday night when — just moments away from landing in Tel Aviv — his flight was rerouted to Larnaca.

“When the pilot made the announcement, everyone went online and saw Israel was attacking Iran and instead of being upset, everybody was clapping,” Berg said. 

But as Shabbat ended — with Israeli airspace still shuttered as Iranian missiles continued to strike in Tel Aviv and elsewhere — “the challenge began again,” Raskin said. Hotels on the island are overwhelmed. Tourists have exhausted their vacation funds. People with chronic illness can’t access medications. 

And they are knocking on Chabad’s door looking for food and accommodations, as many Jews do in moments of crisis around the world. 

“We have a few challenges at the moment,” Raskin said. 

“People have started to lose patience. Parents want to get back to their kids,” said Berg, who on Tuesday traveled some 30 miles to the island’s other Chabad, located in the resort town of Ayia Napa, where he barbecued for the injured IDF soldiers.

The couple whose wedding is scheduled for Thursday remains hopeful they can still get to Israel via boat. 

One of the single mothers who came to Cyprus on vacation has two children with special needs in southern Israel facing constant missile fire. “There’s a lot of tears and crying that she can’t get back to her kids,” Raskin said.  

Still, Raskin said that most of those stranded are making “lemonade out of lemons” during their time on the picturesque island — which is a popular tourist destination for Israelis due to its proximity. 

“The majority of the people here trust in God, so you see happy faces,” Raskin said. “They’re saying, ‘OK, we’re here on holiday, we have a place to stay and food, we’re happy.’” 

Cypriot police said on Sunday that security measures would be increased for Israeli tourists following concerns that Iran or its proxies could attempt to target them abroad. 

Israel’s Transportation Ministry announced on Monday it would launch Operation Safe Return to bring close to 150,000 Israelis stuck abroad back home. According to the Israeli airline El Al, 60,000 Israelis registered for rescue flights to return them to Israel within the first 90 minutes of the registration site going live on Monday. 

Israeli carriers El Al, Arkia and Israir announced on Tuesday that they received permission from the Israeli government to organize repatriation flights to bring back Israelis stranded abroad. The first two flights from Larnaca, Cyprus, landed at Ben Gurion Airport on Wednesday morning. 

“People are doing crazy stuff to get back,” Berg said, adding that while he looks forward to reuniting with his wife and children, who have been hunkered down in Jerusalem, the people in Cyprus “have been very hospitable and accommodating. They love Israelis.” 

“I was here [on holiday] in the summer once, but this is a different experience,” said Berg.

Some Israelis, including Aliyah and Integration Minister Ofir Sofer, who was stuck in Azerbaijan, which borders Iran, were able to return home over the weekend by flying to Greece and then to Cyprus, from which they took a boat to Israel. Others, including civilians, have charted private flights from Larnaca to Israel through Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. 

But Raskin advises displaced Israelis who are safe in Europe to “stay where you are if you have good accommodations.”

“Don’t rush to Cyprus because it won’t get you to Israel any faster.” 

In early June, Rabbi Eleanor Steinman wrote to members of Temple Beth Shalom, the Reform congregation she leads in Austin, Texas, sharing the synagogue’s plans to celebrate Pride Month with several events in June. 

Steinman also revealed that, for the first time in more than two decades, her congregation would not be marching in the Austin Pride parade, which event organizers say draws 200,000 people each August, because of concerns about antisemitism. 

“The Austin Pride organization took an antisemitic stance in the midst of the Pride Parade and Festival last year,” wrote Steinman, who is gay. 

Ahead of last year’s Pride parade, slides were leaked from a presentation in which Austin Pride organizers said hate speech against Jews wasn’t welcome, including “symbols, images or flags used by terrorist and hate groups.” An accompanying image showed people holding a “Globalize the Intifada” sign, a Hamas flag and a “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” banner. It was part of an education campaign for queer activists as anti-Israel sentiment exploded in the queer community after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks and the ensuing war in Gaza, as it did in many other progressive spaces. 

But the effort to educate about antisemitism backfired. Anti-Israel activists pressured Austin Pride to disavow that message. Austin Pride not only backtracked on barring those slogans; it issued a statement pledging to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and stating that the organization does not work with the Anti-Defamation League. In the months that followed, Jewish leaders and LGBTQ activists pushed Austin Pride’s leadership to consider changing this stance, but they did not. 

“Despite attempts to meet with Austin Pride since then, a coalition of Jewish leaders were unable to create an environment where we felt we would be both safe and respected as Jewish LGBTQ+ and allies,” Steinman wrote in the email. 

It was a remarkable statement, tinged with bitter irony: The synagogue first started marching in Pride so that LGBTQ congregants would feel that they could bring their full selves to the Jewish community. Now some of those same congregants feel that they need to suppress their Jewishness in order to fully belong in the queer community. 

“It’s putting people back in the closet,” Steinman told Jewish Insider in a recent interview. “It makes me so angry and so sad that Jewish queer people are having to choose between those two identities, almost in a hierarchy — Which one am I more? — and decide how they want to live their truth.” (Micah Andress, president of Austin Pride, said in a statement that he was “saddened that members of the Jewish community may have been misled about our intentions,” and said “misinformation” was circulating. “Everyone is welcome at Austin Pride. Hate speech, of any kind, is not,” said Andress.)

Temple Beth Shalom was joined by two other synagogues, the local ADL branch and the leadership of Shalom Austin — the umbrella organization encompassing Austin’s Jewish federation, JCC and Jewish Family Service — in pulling out of Austin Pride and announcing a suite of Jewish Pride events instead, including a “Jewish queer joy and resilience” happy hour and two different Pride Shabbat services. 

“There aren’t really very many queer spaces in this city that allow queer Jews to exist without being interrogated about Israel, Zionism, the war, things like that,” said Emily Bourgeois, director of public affairs at Shalom Austin. “We decided that this was a good moment for us and our community, knowing just how isolated the LGBT Jewish community specifically is, to really uplift and celebrate queer Jews.” 

Austin is not the only place where Jewish members of the LGBTQ community are opting out of large Pride events because of fears of antisemitism and worries that they will face exclusion and ostracization. Similar monthlong Jewish Pride festivities are also taking place in San Diego and Raleigh, N.C., where organizers of the citywide Pride festivals have taken stances that Jewish leaders say put LGBTQ Jews at risk. In New York and San Francisco, grassroots “Shalom Dykes” parties are being planned as alternatives to the cities’ Dyke Marches, where anti-Zionist sentiment is de rigueur. 

“We’re not going to let them take Pride away from us. We’re going to create a really inclusive Jewish Pride,” said Rabbi Denise Eger, interim executive director at A Wider Bridge, which builds ties between LGBTQ communities in the U.S. and Israel.

Even amid rising antisemitism, Jews in many places have and will participate in large Pride celebrations. At WorldPride in Washington early this month, a large Jewish contingent marched together. 

“We encouraged people to show up to the parade, especially wearing Jewish pride and not being afraid of showing the world that we are LGBTQ Jews,” said Josh Maxey, executive director of Bet Mishpachah, an LGBTQ synagogue in Washington. “We have every right to be in the Pride march, just as anyone else.”

But in other communities where Pride organizers have aligned their organizations with anti-Israel movements or failed to offer support to concerned Jewish community members, the counterprogramming is a way for queer Jews and allies to express support for the LGBTQ community without having to hide their Jewish identity. 

“We’re not going to let them take Pride away from us. We’re going to create a really inclusive Jewish Pride,” said Rabbi Denise Eger, interim executive director at A Wider Bridge, which builds ties between LGBTQ communities in the U.S. and Israel. (Eger is married to Steinman, the Austin rabbi.) 

Even if the events are meant to be joyful, they will be enjoyed with a hint of discomfort. After years of fighting for inclusion, many LGBTQ Jews worry that excluding Jews is becoming accepted in queer spaces, particularly if those Jews are believed to be Zionists. 

Seth Krosner, a trauma surgeon in San Diego, has seen enormous progress in Jewish spaces when it comes to LGBTQ inclusion. That makes it even harder for him to watch anti-Jewish sentiment become more common in LGBTQ spaces. 

“I’m in my early 60s, and it wasn’t always that you could easily have a husband and be a surgeon, or have a husband — well, if you’re a man — and be president of a Conservative synagogue,” Krosner told JI. He lives near the city’s Pride Parade route, and for years he has hosted his rabbi overnight on Shabbat to enable the rabbi to walk to the parade. 

San Diego Pride has stood by its decision to feature R&B singer Kehlani as its headliner, despite facing pushback from the Jewish community over the singer’s lengthy history of violent rhetoric targeting Israel and Zionists. Five synagogues, along with the San Diego JCC and the San Diego Jewish Federation, formally pulled out of San Diego Pride as a result. They will be collaborating on a weekend-long Jewish Pride event the same weekend in July. San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria also pulled out of the event over Kehlani’s role in it.

“I’m still happy to be a gay man with a wonderful husband. I’m proud to be a Jew, and I insist on being both. I’m not going to be forced to choose. But I can’t go to the parade in all good faith,” Krosner said. A spokesperson for San Diego Pride said the event is “an inclusive space that centers on and celebrates diverse queer identities, voices and joy [and] remains committed to ensuring a welcoming and, above all, safe Pride experience for the entire community.”

“While we respect those from our local Jewish community who have made the decision not to participate in San Diego Pride’s programming this year, we hope everyone will gather during Pride as a sign of solidarity for our queer community,” the spokesperson said. 

“We have been aware for some time of antisemitism within the LGBTQ community,” Rabbi Lucy Dinner, Temple Beth Or’s senior rabbi, told JI. “This promotion of antisemitism by the OUT! Raleigh event leaders is a profound escalation of that expression, so much so that a local police officer advises that our safety may be at risk if Jews participate.”

Jewish communities are already on high alert, following the killing of two Israeli Embassy staffers outside a Jewish museum in Washington last month and the firebombing of a Boulder, Colo., protest for the Israeli hostages in Gaza soon after. A statement by the San Diego Jewish organizations referenced those incidents. “Kehlani’s hateful messages, including calls to ‘eradicate Zionism’ and for an ‘Intifada Revolution’ are not only dehumanizing, but history has shown that when they are normalized and platformed, they can lead to real-world violence against Jews,” they wrote. 

Sometimes, community leaders must take into account security needs and make difficult calls about when it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Temple Beth Or, a Reform congregation in Raleigh, announced in an email to community members last week that the synagogue would not be formally participating in the OUT! Raleigh pride festival after a conversation with a police officer about security concerns. That decision followed the recent uptick in antisemitic violence, but it also came after OUT! Raleigh released a sharply anti-Zionist statement last year adopting BDS and pledging to “unequivocally stand with the Palestinian people” and demand an “end to Israeli occupation of native Palestinian land and the unjust apartheid system.” (JI did not receive a response to an inquiry sent to OUT! Raleigh.) 

“We have been aware for some time of antisemitism within the LGBTQ community,” Rabbi Lucy Dinner, Temple Beth Or’s senior rabbi, told JI. “This promotion of antisemitism by the OUT! Raleigh event leaders is a profound escalation of that expression, so much so that a local police officer advises that our safety may be at risk if Jews participate.” (A Raleigh Police Department spokesperson disputed that the detective in question told the synagogue to pull out of the Pride event. “I want to affirm that RPD fully supports the right of all individuals to come to Raleigh and peacefully exercise their First Amendment rights,” Chief Public Information Officer Lt. David Davis told JI.) 

In 2025, the exclusion of Jews is rarely so cut-and-dry as someone saying “Jews not welcome here,” particularly on the political left. But the New York City Dyke March, an event focused on queer women that draws between 15,000 and 30,000 people to Manhattan every June, came close: It said this year that Zionists aren’t welcome, even as polls show that an overwhelming majority of American Jews feel a connection to Israel. 

“We oppose the nationalist political ideology of Zionism,” Dyke March organizers affirmed in a statement of values adopted this year, over objections from some Jewish activists. One of the activists, Jodi Kreines, was voted off the planning committee as a result. She was not removed for being a Zionist — Kreines never told her fellow committee members if she is or is not a Zionist — but rather for simply voicing that Zionists should be allowed at the Dyke March. 

“Recent public statements attributed to you, expressing support for Zionist inclusion and collaboration, are in direct conflict with our mission and have caused deep concern in our community,” a group of committee members wrote in an email to Kreines that was viewed by JI. “We’d like to ask you to step down from the committee.” When she did not respond to their email, they voted to remove her. 

“What crazy bizarro world is this, where calling for inclusion is a reason to be ousted from an organizing group, from a progressive space?” Kreines told JI on Monday.

This year, many queer Jewish women and nonbinary people will attend a “Shalom Dykes” party instead of the New York Dyke March. Nate Shalev, who organized the first “Shalom Dykes” event in 2024, is excited that it is happening again. But Shalev, who uses they/them pronouns, struggles with feeling they don’t belong in larger activist communities at a time when they want to protest against anti-LGBTQ policies being promoted by conservative politicians. 

“If we set that precedent this year, that we’re siloing Jews to their own spaces, that’s going to continue, and are we ever going to be able to return?” Sarah Haley, a labor organizer in San Francisco asked. “I do think this type of hatred has gone very mainstream. I don’t think it’s fringe anymore. I think it’s pretty popular to be anti-Zionist, to say ‘Zionist scum’ and things like that. To not recognize this as a slur, I think, has become mainstream. If that’s where we are this year, next year, where will we be in five years? Will it be just no Jews allowed, period?”

“I want to be out there protesting and building coalitions around the values and issues that I care about, and I don’t feel like I’m able to do that,” Shalev said. “I don’t know how much we align anymore. Knowing that folks would possibly want to push me out if we had a conversation about it, and my Israeli wife wouldn’t be able to attend these.”

Sarah Haley, a labor organizer in San Francisco, faced harassment and name-calling from other San Francisco Dyke March volunteers when she argued in a planning meeting that Zionists should be allowed to attend the event. 

“In some ways, it feels like we’re backsliding into a time period when Jews were only able to exist in their own spaces, only in their own businesses and their own groups,” Haley told JI. She does not plan to attend the march this year, but worries about what that means for queer Jews in the future. 

“If we set that precedent this year, that we’re siloing Jews to their own spaces, that’s going to continue, and are we ever going to be able to return?” Haley asked. “I do think this type of hatred has gone very mainstream. I don’t think it’s fringe anymore. I think it’s pretty popular to be anti-Zionist, to say ‘Zionist scum’ and things like that. To not recognize this as a slur, I think, has become mainstream. If that’s where we are this year, next year, where will we be in five years? Will it be just no Jews allowed, period?”

For the many queer Jews who do choose to participate in larger Pride gatherings this summer, doing so is often a celebration of their identity — mixed, increasingly, with a quiet apprehension about antisemitism. Idit Klein, president and CEO of Keshet, an organization that fights for LGBTQ inclusion in the Jewish community, marched in WorldPride in Washington this month.

“It really was a day of queer Jewish joy, with these flashes of vulnerability, and looking around, and anxiety about what might happen, and then profound relief and gratitude,” Klein told JI. “I’m really kind of amazed by this: There wasn’t a flicker of negativity.”

As the WorldPride parade marched down 14th Street the first weekend in June, several announcers situated throughout the parade route shouted out the name of each contingent that marched past. 

“Happy Pride, queer Jews of Washington, D.C.!” the announcers said. 

Except one of them didn’t see the group’s banner, and chimed in with a different name, deduced from the sight of an Israeli flag. 

“Happy Pride, LGBTQ people from Israel!” the announcer stated. 

The Jewish marchers paused and held their breath, hoping the reaction from spectators wouldn’t be too harsh.

“All of us froze for a moment and wondered, what is going to happen now?” Klein recalled. Would this be one of those bad stories? 

Then everyone cheered, just like they did for all the other floats and groups. And they kept on marching.

“To have an experience of a parade, and all the more so in Washington, D.C., given the murders that just happened there, that really just felt embracing and celebratory — that felt quite extraordinary,” said Klein.

Protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportations that have engulfed San Francisco’s streets this week took an antisemitic turn on Monday night when a local Jewish-owned civic engagement hub and community space had its windows smashed and walls defaced with slurs including “Die Zio,” “The Only Good Settler is a Dead One,” “Death 2 Israel is a Promise” and “Intifada.” 

“There is no justification for attacking me other than the fact that I am Jewish,” Manny Yekutiel, owner of the Mission District event space Manny’s, which is in disrepair following the vandalism and break-in, told Jewish Insider. “My business is not a pro-Israel business. I am not Israeli. This is not a space that represents Israel in any way.”

The space was also the target of antisemitic graffiti in October around the one year anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attacks. The most recent attack is currently being investigated as a hate crime. 

In the Bay Area, over 150 people were arrested on Sunday and Monday following protests against President Donald Trump’s travel ban, latest immigration policies and ICE raids. Similar protests spread across the country — including in Los Angeles where 4,000 National Guard members and 700 U.S. Marines were deployed on Monday. 

Yekutiel believes the protests against ICE are “necessary” because ongoing deportations are “stoking hatred” and “we need to stand with immigrants.” While Yekutiel says he will continue identifying with left-wing causes, he also said the attack on his business makes the protests concerning for Jews.

The attack on Manny’s “undermines the very values such movements claim to uphold” such as “justice and welcome the stranger,” the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area said in a statement.

Monday’s vandalism in San Francisco comes as the Jewish community faces an “elevated threat” following a surge of violent antisemitic attacks across the country in recent weeks, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security warned last week. Last month, two Israeli Embassy employees were killed in a shooting in Washington. Days later in Boulder, Colo., 15 people advocating for the release of hostages in Gaza were injured in a firebombing by an Egyptian national who overstayed his visa in the U.S. 

Trump announced his travel ban — which bars nationals of 12 countries from entering the U.S. — last week following the Boulder attack.

“The recent terror attack in Boulder, Colorado has underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted, as well as those who come here as temporary visitors and overstay their visas,” Trump said. “We don’t want them.”

In his campaign for New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, a far-left Queens state assemblyman polling in second place behind former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, has indicated he would not visit Israel if he is elected, saying he does not believe that such a trip is necessary “to stand up for Jewish New Yorkers.”

“I believe that to stand up for Jewish New Yorkers means that you actually meet Jewish New Yorkers wherever they may be, be it at their synagogues and temples or their homes or on the subway platform or at a park, wherever it may be,” Mamdani, a fierce critic of Israel, reiterated in comments at a mayoral forum hosted by several progressive Jewish groups on Sunday night.

By contrast, in a 2020 Zoom discussion with the Adalah Justice Project, a pro-Palestinian advocacy group, Mamdani said he was planning to organize a trip to the Palestinian territories, suggesting that he would make an exception for an issue he has upheld as one of his top causes during his tenure in Albany.

“Once COVID is over, I am planning on finding a way to coordinate a trip with other legislators to Palestine,” Mamdani said at the time. “We’ll figure that one out. I’ll probably get to the border and get turned away, but at the very least I’m going to organize it and go myself.”

It is unclear if Mamdani organized such a trip. His campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.

The comments, however, broadly underscore how Mamdani’s past remarks on the Israel-Palestinian conflict have become a source of growing tension as he confronts basic questions on the issue during his mayoral campaign. 

Several of Mamdani’s Democratic opponents in the June 24 primary have said they would visit Israel if elected — in keeping with a long-standing tradition for New York City mayors who represent the largest Jewish community outside of Israel. Cuomo, who is leading the primary, has vowed it would be his first trip abroad, as have other candidates.

Mamdani, for his part, has suggested he would not visit any foreign country as mayor, saying he would instead “stay in New York City,” as he confirmed at the first mayoral debate last week. “My plans are to address New Yorkers across the five boroughs and focus on that,” he said.

During the mayoral forum on Sunday evening, he also raised doubts about whether he would be able to enter Israel at all, citing Israeli legislation barring non-citizen backers of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement from visiting the Jewish state.

Despite his long-standing support for BDS, Mamdani, who has faced scrutiny for declining to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, did not provide a direct answer about whether he would continue to endorse the movement as mayor when asked at the forum, saying only that he would seek to “bring New York City back into” compliance with international law.

“I think ultimately, the focus of our mayor should be on the issues of New York City at hand,” he insisted, even as he had argued in the Zoom conversation five years ago that BDS is a salient “local” issue and said that mayoral candidates should be pressured to join the movement to boycott Israel.

Elsewhere in that discussion, Mamdani voiced hostility to resolutions in the state Legislature to “disavow BDS” or “stand in solidarity with Israel,” which he dismissed as promoting Israeli interests. 

“They use all of these hasbara propaganda talking points in the resolutions,” Mamdani said, using the Hebrew word for Israeli public diplomacy. “That is one place to fight is to stop such resolutions from being passed, to pass different kinds of resolutions.”

Mamdani has faced scrutiny for not signing on to several resolutions commemorating the Holocaust and honoring Israel during his tenure in office. He has defended his decision as consistent with what he now describes as a general policy against joining any such measures.

“In January, I told my Assembly staff not to co-sponsor any resolutions that were emailed to our office,” Mamdani said in a video last month. “It had nothing to do with the content of the resolution. But I understand this has caused pain and confusion for many.”

He said he had “voted every year for the Holocaust Remembrance Day Resolution, including this year, to honor the more than 6 million Jewish people murdered by the Nazis.”

It’s Friday evening in Manhattan’s fashionable West Village. A couple dozen of New York’s elite — business executives, a television producer, a fashion designer, a journalist and a few politicos — pack a charming brownstone, a spot that’s been frequented by a range of influential people, from former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides to reality TV personality Andy Cohen. Wine flows around a long candlelit table. A three-course meal and deep discussion follow late into the night. 

This isn’t dinner in one of the neighborhood’s Michelin-starred restaurants — although some weeks the waitlist here can be just as long. It’s Shabbat at Chabad West Village. 

There are more than 3,000 Chabad Houses around the world aimed at Jewish outreach, inspired by the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson. New York City alone is home to some 40 Chabad centers. Each Chabad caters to the characteristics of the community it serves.

But in the West Village — one of Manhattan’s most unlikely neighborhoods for the spread of Torah — synagogue-goers, a diverse group of mostly secular Jews, say something unique is happening at this Chabad in particular. The growing, vibrant community is a stark contrast with the shul just across the street, the Charles Street Synagogue that sits defunct. 

“When we moved here, we did not know one person,” Rabbi Berel Gurevitch, who launched Chabad West Village six years ago with his wife, Chana, told Jewish Insider. “Now our list consists of around 5,000 Jewish people,” said Gurevitch, who is in his early 30s but declines to disclose his exact age so as not to inhibit older members from connecting.  

The Gurevitches decamped from the comfort of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where they both grew up, for the West Village, a neighborhood known for its trendy arts and nightlife scene. The synagogue initially ran out of a small apartment on Grove Street — with New Yorker staff writer Calvin Trillin, who still attends frequently — as its landlord. 

Now in a townhouse on Charles Street, where such real estate can run into the tens of millions of dollars, the center, which is also the personal home of the Gurevitches and their three children, has become synonymous with several innovative programs: letting attendees be “Rabbi for a Day”; a “TGIF” program where participants learn how to host Friday night dinners with their friends; explanatory “Shabbat Matinée” services for people who would otherwise be at brunch and are giving prayer a chance; and a speaker series called “Hineni: Here I Am,” which has featured Trillin, Nides, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and comedian Alex Edelman. 

“[Rabbi Gurevitch’s] energy and drive was infectious instantaneously,” Marc Calcano, the West Village Chabad’s security director, told JI. “You can easily tell how everyone in the congregation lives based on this energy. It’s not just the synagogue where you go to worship, but it’s where you meet great people and there’s incredible conversation. After services no one ever wants to leave. This place is incredibly special. The lingering continues for hours.” 

Unlike some Chabad centers, which cater specifically to young professionals, families or senior citizens, the West Village Chabad has drawn a diverse crowd that spans different age groups and income levels. The community has recently celebrated several simchas and full-circle moments, where children and their parents pray together.

“It started for my kids. [The rabbi] brought in a real beehive to teach about [honey for] Rosh Hashanah and I just thought ‘what an amazing thing to encounter in the middle of the West Village,’” said Steeven Mallet, 42, who stumbled upon the Chabad four years ago while walking his dog and has sent his children to its preschool since. “Then we started going for Shabbos and events.” 

“My wife is Conservative, I’m Orthodox and there’s just a crowd of everyone,” said Mallet, who was born and raised in France and works in finance. “It’s a very tolerant community.” 

Marc Calcano, the West Village Chabad’s security director, was hired in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks on Israel — as antisemitism skyrocketed around the U.S. and Jewish institutions remained on high alert. “[Rabbi Gurevitch’s] energy and drive was infectious instantaneously,” Calcano, a former NYPD officer, reflected. “You can easily tell how everyone in the congregation lives based on this energy. It’s not just the synagogue where you go to worship, but it’s where you meet great people and there’s incredible conversation. After services no one ever wants to leave. This place is incredibly special. The lingering continues for hours,” he told JI.   

In January, Calcano celebrated the bar mitzvah of his son, Carter, at the synagogue. Calcano — who is not Jewish but whose children have a Jewish mother — never expected that Carter, who has Down syndrome, would be able to lead a bar mitzvah service. But with the help of Gurevitch, he did it. “Every minute that I spend thinking about it is an emotional minute for me,” Calcano said.   

In April, a Grammy-nominated musician and a Trump White House staffer, who got married in 2022 after meeting at Chabad West Village, celebrated their second child’s bris at the synagogue.

Among the qualities that set the synagogue apart is its fast-growing demographic of singles and young professionals — at a time when polls from recent years show that synagogue attendance is declining for the majority of American Jewish young adults — especially those unmarried and without children. According to Gurevitch, every young professional event he’s held since Oct. 7 has sold out. Last month, the center hosted its first wine tasting Shabbat dinner geared towards those in their 20s and 30s. 

“I was extremely lonely when I first moved to New York,” Scarlett Tucker, a 30-year-old CPA who lives in the neighborhood, told JI. Tucker, who met her best friend after first attending a Shabbat dinner at the center in 2022, describes her Jewish upbringing in California as “eating lobster at the Passover Seder.” 

“I feel very close to Chana [Gurevitch] and I don’t have any family here so it’s been a warm place,” Tucker said. “For a long time, I didn’t really understand being Jewish.”

“I have not gotten more religious at all, I’ve just gotten more comfortable with it,” she continued. “The one thing that has changed for me, most significantly, is that it’s now very important to me that I marry someone Jewish.” 

“They have created, and allowed me to help build with them, a vibrant Jewish base for me and so many others in downtown New York City, where Jews from all walks of life can find an entry point into our tradition,” Neil Goldman, segment producer at the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, told JI. “They have established a beautiful Jewish community where none existed, have brought so many Jews in touch with their Jewish heritage for the first time, and are fulfilling the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s call to make our world a brighter, more spiritual place.” 

Ezra Feig, the 33-year-old founder of Nice Jewish Runners, a running club started in the aftermath of Oct. 7, told JI that his attendance at Chabad West Village for the past three years has felt “unique” due to “how they have managed to attract so many amazing people which has created a feeling where everyone is welcome and feels included.” 

Feig reflected that as he was going through El Al security on the way to Israel for Passover, he was asked what community he belonged to. When he said “Chabad West Village,” the security agent responded, “Oh I’ve heard what a great community that is. I’m going to come check it out.” 

Neil Goldman, segment producer at the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, told JI that he was drawn to Chabad West Village five years ago by the Gurevitches’ “soulfulness, their elegance, and of course their food.” 

“They have created, and allowed me to help build with them, a vibrant Jewish base for me and so many others in downtown New York City, where Jews from all walks of life can find an entry point into our tradition,” said Goldman, who is 39. “They have established a beautiful Jewish community where none existed, have brought so many Jews in touch with their Jewish heritage for the first time, and are fulfilling the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s call to make our world a brighter, more spiritual place.” 

Jonathan Harounoff, Israel’s international spokesperson to the United Nations, described a similar setting where “regulars are highly impressive and the food is incredible.”  

“What makes the place even more appealing, though, is its total lack of pretension,” Harounoff, 29, told JI. 

While congregants echo that the people — and food — are what make the synagogue special, the 5,000- square-foot, multistory West Village townhome is distinctive in itself — and holds a metaphor, according to Gurevitch. 

Etched into the walls of the sanctuary is a line from the Book of Genesis, “Behold, God was in this place and I didn’t know it.” 

“Our dreams are big,” Gurevitch said. “On a fundamental level, I would like to see a thriving Jewish community here. Until every Jewish person in this area has that connection and access, our job isn’t finished and we’re far from there. We’ve only scratched the surface.”

“I like people to have their own interpretations of it,” Gurevitch told JI. “But I think the most obvious one is that this Chabad, like an expression of life itself, is a place where you can find God in the most unexpected way. You’re walking down the street in the West Village and suddenly you walk inside and there’s 140 people praying. Wake up and realize that God is in here, you don’t have to travel the world or climb mountains or turn your life upside down to find God. I think this Chabad physically and spiritually represents that.” 

Amid hosting events and meals for a variety of movers and shakers, Chana stressed the importance of “striking a balance.”

“We hold on to that homey, warm, intimate feeling even though there are thousands of members and very well-attended events,” she said.

The Gurevitches’ vision for Jewish life in the West Village is only just beginning. “Our dreams are big,” the rabbi said. “On a fundamental level, I would like to see a thriving Jewish community here. Until every Jewish person in this area has that connection and access, our job isn’t finished and we’re far from there. We’ve only scratched the surface.”

“Five, 10 years from now,” he continued, “I would love to walk down the street on Shabbat and see kippahs, people walking with their tallits, moms pushing strollers, Jewish people living publicly and proudly and us being able to provide the support base and epicenter for all of them.” 

Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL), the newest Jewish Republican member of Congress, argued on Monday, following an antisemitic attack on a group marching in support of the hostages in Gaza in Boulder, Colo., that the federal government should take aggressive action against groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations whose executive director said he was “happy to see” the Oct. 7 terror attack.

Fine added that the federal government also should be deporting all undocumented immigrants and take a strong hand toward college campuses in order to fight rising antisemitism..

“I’m angry that we’ve allowed this to get there, I’m angry that we’ve allowed Muslim terror to operate unfettered in this country,” Fine said in an interview with Jewish Insider on Monday. “Make no mistake, the Palestinian cause is fundamentally a broken, evil philosophy … It’s time to realize there is evil in this world and we have to fight it.”

He said that institutions tied to that ideology, including CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood and Students for Justice in Palestine, should not be allowed to operate in the United States, and should be designated as terrorist organizations, “because that’s what they are.” 

He noted that the executive director of CAIR had celebrated the Oct. 7 attack, and remains in his position. Nihad Awad had in November 2023 said he “was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land and walk free into their land that they were not allowed to walk in.”

Fine also said that the U.S. must deport “every illegal immigrant,” as well as closely examine individuals entering the country “from these places that hate us.” The Boulder attacker, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, was an Egyptian immigrant who overstayed a tourist visa and was subsequently granted a work permit, which expired in March, according to Fox News.

Fine said that, while security funding is important, it’s impossible to provide individual security to every Jewish American, making it critical to go on the offensive.

“What we need to do is hunt bad guys,” Fine said. “And we can start by throwing out every illegal immigrant. And we can start by taking a hard look at people who are here on visas from Egypt.”

He said the U.S. must also move to stop countries such as Qatar and China “who are not our friends,” from “buying our universities and buying off our media outlets,” and take action to protect Jewish students.

He noted that he has introduced legislation that would explicitly make antisemitism and other forms of religious discrimination illegal on college campuses. Currently, based on guidance in executive orders, antisemitism is banned as a form of discrimination based on shared ancestry. Fine argued that his legislation would “create real legal courses of action” for Jewish students to protect themselves.

Though Elias Gonzalez — who killed two Israeli Embassy staffers outside of the Capital Jewish Museum last month — was not a student or an undocumented immigrant, Fine argued that campuses and immigrants are epicenters of antisemitic incitement and that addressing those would address larger trends.

“When these people hear that the nation’s best universities are saying that Israel is engaged in a genocide or 14,000 babies are going to die, they are radicalizing people through false information with the stamp of approval of universities,” Fine said. “So this guy [Gonzalez] was involved with organizations that are tied back to universities.”

“Also, he may not be an illegal immigrant, he may not be on a visa from another country, but I guarantee he was hanging around people who were and they’re going to rub off,” Fine continued.

Fine said he expects that antisemitic rhetoric and attacks will only get worse after Sunday’s attack in Boulder. He said he hadn’t slept the night after the attack because he was afraid of what might come next.

“What the Muslim terrorists will do is they’ll do what they did before — they double down, they get more aggressive with the rhetoric afterwards,” Fine said. “That’s part of the strategy. Punch and then punch harder … Muslim terrorists have declared open season on Jews. And I think that is a frightening thing. And I think the people who need to be hunted are the Muslim terrorists.”

Pressed on the fact that Rodriguez was not Muslim, Fine responded, “there are white supremacists who aren’t white … it is terrorism that is rooted in the Muslim faith.”

“They call it Christian nationalism, I don’t think every Christian is a bad person, I think very few of them are,” Fine continued.

Fine argued that surveys show a substantial portion of American Muslims are sympathetic to Hamas, that leading Muslim organizations like CAIR have supported Hamas and antisemitism, that there are few in Gaza who have stood up against Hamas and that many of those who participated in the Oct. 7 attack were not Hamas fighters.

“We are told, ‘No, no, no, it’s this tiny, tiny fringe.’ It is not a tiny fringe,” Fine said. “I don’t know whether it’s 30 or 40 or 70 or 90%, I don’t know. But I know it’s not 1% that are bad, and it’s time for us to stop pretending that it is.”

For decades, Jewish and pro-Israel groups invested significant resources in building bipartisan relationships with key members of Congress to steer legislation, while helping secure foreign aid and blocking unfavorable initiatives concerning the Middle East.

But that long-standing playbook has appeared less effective and relevant in recent years as Congress has increasingly ceded its authority on foreign policy to the executive branch, a trend that has accelerated with President Donald Trump’s return to office. The dynamic is frustrating pro-Israel advocates who had long prioritized Congress as a vehicle of influence, prompting many to reassess the most effective ways to advocate for preferred policies.

That Congress had no formal role in Trump’s recent decisions to unilaterally reach a ceasefire with the Houthis in Yemen and to lift sanctions on Syria, for example, has stoked speculation that legislators could also be sidelined from ratifying a potential nuclear deal with Iran.

There are any number of reasons why Congress has taken a back seat in shaping foreign affairs, experts say, including Trump’s efforts to consolidate power in the executive branch, most recently by gutting the National Security Council. And Trump’s own power in reshaping the ideological direction of his party, preferring diplomacy over military engagement, has made more-hawkish voices within the party more reluctant to speak out against administration policy.

“Congress is increasingly irrelevant except on nominations and taxes,” Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who served as a special envoy for Iran in the first Trump administration, told Jewish Insider. “It has abandoned its once-central role on tariffs, and plays little role in other foreign affairs issues. That’s a long-term trend and we saw it in previous administrations, but it is worsened by the deadlocks on Capitol Hill, the need to get 60 votes to do almost anything, and by Trump’s centralization of power in the White House.”

Previously, “when there was real power in the departments, congressional oversight meant a lot more,” Abrams added. “If you’re a foreign ambassador in Washington, there’s no one to talk to at the NSC, lots of vacancies at State, and while there are plenty of people to meet with on the Hill, what are they going to do for you? You need to see Trump” Abrams said, or Steve Witkoff, the special envoy to the Middle East leading the negotiations with Iran.

The executive branch, to be sure, has long held significant control over foreign policy but it has expanded considerably in the decades following the 9/11 attacks. Since then, a law passed by Congress to authorize the invasion in Iraq in 2003 has been used — and, critics allege, abused — by successive administrations to initiate military action abroad without first seeking approval from lawmakers who are constitutionally empowered to decide when the country goes to war and oversee defense spending.

Still, Congress has also long shown “disinterest” in exercising its power over foreign policy, said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. “This was a preexisting condition,” he explained to JI. “By and large, Congress abdicated its oversight role before Trump even came to office,” especially as national security matters have been overshadowed by competing domestic issues such as inflation and immigration, which “resonate more saliently” with voters.

“Trump’s dominance over the Republican Party accounts for much of the acquiescence on the part of his Congress,” observed Stephen Schlesinger, a historian who specializes in international affairs. “But let us not forget that recent Democratic presidents have practically had a free hand, too, in pursuing their own global policies — with little reaction or opposition from their party members.”

Among other examples, Schlesinger cited former President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran — brokered without consent from Congress — as well as former President Joe Biden’s “total support” for Ukraine in its war against Russia.

Republican deference to Trump, however, has set a new standard for such acquiescence, Schlesinger argued, particularly on talks with Iran. “Given the past obsessive Republican fury against a deal with Iran during Democratic administrations, still none in Trump’s party have objected to a nuclear deal with Tehran under Trump, or, for that matter, his solo decision to lift sanctions on Syria, a country led by a former radical Islamic leader,” Schlesinger noted.

“Certainly the reality of governance in Washington today is that Congress may not be totally irrelevant, but they’re an appendage to the whims and desires of the Trump presidency,” said Norman Ornstein, a senior scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “There is little if any pushback or oversight of what Trump” and his advisors “involved in foreign policy and diplomacy are doing — and that’s a change.”

The new dynamic has forced pro-Israel groups to adapt to a new political landscape in which their traditional advocacy has been weakened by Congress’ diminished clout and lack of interest in asserting meaningful supervision over Trump’s recent Middle East policy decisions.

“There are very few remedies for this kind of a standoff where the executive branch has arrogated to itself so much power that Congress is essentially marginalized,” said Danielle Pletka, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who previously worked on the Hill. “When you look at the question of Israel, you have to see it in the context of much broader trends.”

Marshall Wittmann, a spokesperson for AIPAC, argued that both “the administration and Congress play a critical role in strengthening and expanding the U.S.-Israel relationship, and AIPAC works with key leaders in power, on both sides of the aisle and both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue, to build support for the mutually beneficial alliance between America and Israel.” 

The absence of congressional influence has come as disagreements have emerged between the Trump administration and the Netanyahu government over ending the war in Gaza and nuclear diplomacy with Iran. Trump’s recent trip to the Middle East — where he met with a range of Arab leaders but did not stop in Israel — was one of the latest indications of deprioritization of America’s closest ally in the region.

Tensions have also surfaced amid ongoing negotiations with Iran. Pro-Israel advocates have voiced concerns that Trump’s negotiating team is nearing an agreement that could simply reinstate the deal brokered by the Obama administration a decade ago — which detractors had criticized as a pathway to a nuclear weapon since it allowed Iran to continue enriching uranium.

The Trump administration has indicated it will not permit Iran to retain domestic nuclear enrichment — even as some officials have sent mixed signals on the matter, contributing to a sense of confusion over the ultimate terms of an agreement. Trump pulled out of the original deal — which was widely opposed by Republicans — during his first administration.

For pro-Israel groups, the risks of clashing with Trump on key issues likely outweigh the benefits, observers contend. “Any organization has to very carefully weigh its equities before publicly taking on the administration,” Daniel Silverberg, a former top foreign policy advisor to Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), told JI.

The pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC has recognized that it is now operating in a unique landscape, according to Manny Houle, a Democratic pro-Israel strategist who previously served as the group’s progressive outreach director in the Midwest. Before Trump was elected, Howard Kohr, AIPAC’s former president, frequently said the group “was all about Congress,” Houle recalled in a recent interview with JI. “Then, Trump was in office and he said we’re going to be dealing with the White House.”

Marshall Wittmann, a spokesperson for AIPAC, argued that both “the administration and Congress play a critical role in strengthening and expanding the U.S.-Israel relationship, and AIPAC works with key leaders in power, on both sides of the aisle and both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue, to build support for the mutually beneficial alliance between America and Israel.” 

“President Trump has a strong pro-Israel and anti-Iran record, but his administration evinced early on a lack of expertise and consistency in its policy toward Iran’s nuclear program,” said Michael Makovsky, president and CEO of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. “But recently that position has evolved and strengthened due in no small part to feedback it has gotten.”

“We applaud the administration’s strong statements and actions in support of our ally, commend Congress for passing pro-Israel legislation such as the annual appropriation for lifesaving security assistance to Israel, and appreciate President Trump and congressional leaders both making clear last week that Iran must completely dismantle its nuclear program,” Wittmann said in a statement to JI last week.

Even as Congress has failed to take formal action over points of disagreement with Trump’s recent Middle East directives, some pro-Israel activists suggested their outreach to lawmakers on the Iran talks in particular has yielded substantive results in recent weeks. 

“President Trump has a strong pro-Israel and anti-Iran record, but his administration evinced early on a lack of expertise and consistency in its policy toward Iran’s nuclear program,” said Michael Makovsky, president and CEO of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. “But recently that position has evolved and strengthened due in no small part to feedback it has gotten.”

In public and private settings, JINSA and other pro-Israel groups, as well as Israeli officials and congressional Republicans, “have made the case that Trump needs to stick to his initial policy of dismantlement of Iran’s enrichment facilities,” Makovsky said.

“This has contributed to Trump officials pivoting in the past couple weeks to a tougher ‘no enrichment’ stand,” Makovsky told JI last week.

Eric Levine, a top GOP fundraiser and a board member of the Republican Jewish Coalition who recently launched a federal lobbying practice, said “the most important voice Congress will have is if the president makes a deal with Iran. I think that it’s really important that the Senate remains steadfast and safeguards its powers and insists, if there is a deal, it should be counted as a treaty. If he thinks it’s an amazing deal, he should have no trouble passing it.”

Still, it remains to be seen if the toughest voices against Iran in the Senate who have expressed reservations with enrichment limits and other perceived weaknesses of a potential deal will push back against Trump if he lands on an agreement that does not meet their standards. While some Republican lawmakers have spoken out in recent weeks to set expectations for a deal, including Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), observers say they are skeptical that Congress will ultimately seek to flex its authority if an agreement comes forward.

“The ultimate test will be if there’s a vote on Iran,” said former Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY), a pro-Israel Democrat who opposed Obama’s deal in 2015. “As Congress has grown more performative, it has become less deliberative on foreign policy,” he added. “The speaker’s gavel has become a rubber stamp. The result is an abdication by Congress of its delineated responsibilities.”

Eric Levine, a top GOP fundraiser and a board member of the Republican Jewish Coalition who recently launched a federal lobbying practice, said “the most important voice Congress will have is if the president makes a deal with Iran.”

“I think that it’s really important that the Senate remains steadfast and safeguards its powers and insists, if there is a deal, it should be counted as a treaty,” said Levine. “If he thinks it’s an amazing deal, he should have no trouble passing it,” Levine said of Trump’s efforts to reach what he has suggested is an imminent accord.

It is unclear if the White House will seek approval from Congress for a deal, even as lawmakers have recently stressed that an agreement would have no guarantee of surviving in future administrations if not ratified by the legislative branch.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio affirmed during hearings on Capitol Hill last week that U.S. law requires that any deal with Iran be submitted to Congress for review and approval, noting that he had been in Congress when that law, the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, was passed. A White House spokesperson declined to confirm if Trump plans to present a potential deal to Congress when reached by JI on Wednesday, deferring to the president and Witkoff’s remarks from the Oval Office — which did not address the matter.

With Congress increasingly on the sidelines, some pro-Israel groups have turned to alternative forms of advocacy to buttress their lobbying efforts in recent years.

“Advocacy tactics are always changing,” James Thurber, a distinguished professor of government at American University and a leading expert on federal lobbying, told JI. “It is like war where opponents must be flexible, try new tools, assess and adjust. It is essential to be persistently focused on the best strategy, theme and message and to not rely on outdated lobbying tactics.”

“Our world has changed,” said Ann Lewis, a veteran Democratic advisor and a former co-chair of Democratic Majority for Israel, whose formidable political arm has actively engaged in congressional primaries featuring sharp divisions over Israel. “Any definition of advocacy that begins post-election is less effective than it deserves to be.”

Indeed, AIPAC’s foray into campaign politics four years ago, marking a major tactical shift for the organization, was a sign of the changing power dynamics in Washington. The group has since helped to elect a range of congressional allies, while working to unseat some of the fiercest critics of Israel in the House and blocking potential antagonists from getting elected.

“Advocacy tactics are always changing,” James Thurber, a distinguished professor of government at American University and a leading expert on federal lobbying, told JI. “It is like war where opponents must be flexible, try new tools, assess and adjust. It is essential to be persistently focused on the best strategy, theme and message and to not rely on outdated lobbying tactics.”

But as most foreign policy decisions now emanate from the White House, some pro-Israel activists say they remain frustrated by the lack of will from Congress to assert its authority, even as they vow their efforts will continue.

“It is tragic that Congress has so blatantly shirked its responsibility to act as a check and balance on the executive branch,” a senior political operative involved in pro-Israel advocacy recently lamented. “But under no circumstances does that mean we stop fighting for the future of the U.S.-Israel relationship.”

Only in a family where nearly everyone is a rabbi does becoming a Cabinet secretary in one of the largest states in the nation make you a black sheep. 

That’s the joke that Uri Monson, Pennsylvania’s budget secretary, likes to make when describing his career as a public servant in the context of his family — a brother, father, grandfather and great-grandfather who were rabbis; a stepmother who was a lifelong Jewish nonprofit professional; and a mother who was a renowned Jewish academic and university administrator.

But coming out of that kind of lineage (his great-grandfather was the first person to certify Coca-Cola as kosher!), choosing a career in public service was Monson’s act of “pseudo-rebellion,” he said in an interview with Jewish Insider earlier this month. He didn’t stray that far from his Jewish values, though — during his first internship, at city hall in Philadelphia, he helped draft the mayor’s speech for Israeli Independence Day.

“I grew up a mile from Independence Hall. I’ve always been an American government junkie, and fascinated by and love[d] government and its ability to really help,” said Monson, 56. “I felt, even at 18, that I could make it better, that it had to be able to be done better, and that started me on that path to public service.” 

Even if Monson didn’t follow his family members into the Jewish professional world, growing up immersed in deep conversations about the weekly Torah portion over Shabbat lunch and spending his summers at Camp Ramah in the Poconos shaped his approach to public service just as much as his wonky fascination with fiscal policy and his master’s degree in public administration.

“What we’ve seen all along is that that Jewish perspective has shaped his commitment to what government can do and the way that society should work,” said Rabbi Chaim Galfand, the head rabbi at Perelman Jewish Day School in Philadelphia and a close friend of Monson’s. 

Monson attended the joint program at List College at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he earned a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University and another, in midrash, from  JTS. The intellectual curiosity and creativity that comes from his expertise in interpreting the Torah — Monson calls himself a “midrash parsha junkie” — colors the way he approaches everything from budgetary policy to his weekly Settlers of Catan board games with Galfand each Shabbat. 

The biblical stories about Joseph are his favorite; Joseph’s “rise in the political world,” from slave to advisor to the Egyptian pharaoh, is particularly resonant for Monson. But he doesn’t think there is only one way to engage with these stories, and that’s a lesson that guides his approach to public policy, too.

“When you make that jump to learning that the Talmud is not a book of law, but that it’s a book of how to think about law, it’s a major change. It’s a major jump in thought,” Monson said. “To realize that you had people disagreeing over really complex issues of Jewish law — that’s how they lived their lives, and what they actually record [in the Talmud] is the discussion and the back-and-forth and the debate. They were able to do it while living civilly together.”

Monson started his career in Washington as a policy advisor at the Department of Education during the Clinton administration. He has friends from that era who have lost their jobs as the Trump administration slashes the federal workforce. Monson does not reflexively believe all public employees have a right to keep their jobs; his former boss, President Bill Clinton, also stressed efficiency and shrunk the federal workforce by hundreds of thousands of people. But he does think those workers should be respected.

“There are few of us who have a mantra, and I share this with the governor, that [we] cannot stand the phrase, ‘That’s the way we’ve always done it.’ There are always opportunities for change,” he said, referring to Gov. Josh Shapiro. “The biggest difference for me between what I was a part of and what the current administration is doing is that that change was all about employee empowerment.” Shapiro has made a play for laid-off federal workers, encouraging them to apply to fill vacancies in Pennsylvania.

Monson’s time in Washington got him started on his path to Harrisburg — both because it was his first full-time gig in the government, and also because it was in this era that he reconnected with Shapiro, who was working on Capitol Hill at the time. 

“Like most expatriate Eagles fans, we would find each other to watch games, that kind of thing,” said Monson. But their relationship goes back decades: Shapiro and Monson’s younger brother, Ami, were in the same grade at Akiba Hebrew Academy, a pluralistic Jewish day school in the Philadelphia suburbs. (CNN anchor Jake Tapper was another classmate.) Shapiro’s parents and Monson’s were active in the Soviet Jewry movement of the 1970s and 1980s.

“Uri and I both lean on our family and our faith as motivation to serve the good people of Pennsylvania,” Shapiro told JI in a statement last week. “We are both driven by the same Jewish principle of tikkun olam, and from the passage from the Talmud that teaches us that no one is required to complete the task, but neither are we free to refrain from it.”

Shapiro’s first video ad in his 2022 gubernatorial campaign showed him, his wife and their children celebrating Shabbat. Monson, who observes Shabbat and does not work or travel from sundown Friday until Saturday night, receives weekly “Shabbat shalom” emails from Shapiro.

“When he offered me the job, I said, ‘I’m not going to be in Harrisburg on Fridays in the winter’” — when Shabbat begins in the late afternoon — “and he said he understood,” Monson recalled. Over the years, his colleagues have gotten used to Monson’s Shabbat observance, sending emails on Saturdays with the subject line “read me first” to try to capture his attention after Shabbat ends.

“Once in a while they’re like, ‘Maybe I want to be Jewish too,’ because they need a break,” Monson said, laughing. 

Monson returned to Philadelphia in the late 1990s for the first in a series of increasingly powerful jobs dealing with municipal and school district budgets. In 2012, when Shapiro was chair of the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners, he tapped Monson to serve as chief financial officer of the commonwealth’s third most populous county. Monson then spent seven years as chief financial officer of the School District of Philadelphia, which has a budget of $4.6 billion, helping shepherd the district through the tumult of the COVID-19 pandemic. He joined Shapiro in Harrisburg in early 2023.

“Uri had a very calming presence of being able to lead with certainty in very uncertain times,” said Larisa Shambaugh, the former chief talent officer in the Philadelphia school district, where she worked closely with Monson. She saw him take a forward-looking approach to budgeting, thinking not just about cost but about how to advance the interests of the school district.

“What was truly a joy about working with Uri is that he wasn’t a CFO that was focused only on finances and only on the bottom line,” Shambaugh explained. “When we would be thinking about proposing a new initiative or a new policy or a new staffing structure, the first question wasn’t, How much would this cost and can we afford it? It was, Why is this best for students?”

Shambaugh also benefitted from another skill Monson brought with him to his next job: his baking skills. He baked lemon squares for a meeting with new school board members. When he found out Shambaugh loved challah, he baked her one. In his new job, he’s baked cranberry walnut muffins twice — once to relax before a budget hearing and once to get rid of flour before Passover — and brought hamantaschen to the capital during Purim. (“We’ve all been on the receiving end of his largesse,” said Galfand.)

Monson has spent the spring testifying at Statehouse hearings about Shapiro’s $51.5 billion budget proposal. This is the forum where he allows his Torah discussion skills to shine: keeping his cool under sometimes hostile questions from Republicans, and disarming them by actually being willing to engage. (When he sat down at this year’s budget hearings, he wore a custom kippah showing the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, made by an artist his wife found on Etsy.)

“I will never claim to have a monopoly on good ideas, and I think that’s something I certainly learned from around the table and from growing up among the rabbis,” said Monson. “I want to learn from everybody, because you can learn from everybody, and be open to the discussion.”

Jewish faculty, alumni and students at Harvard — including some who have been outspoken against Harvard’s handling of antisemitism over the past year and a half — are watching with concern as the White House targets the Ivy League institution and the university prepares to battle with the Trump administration.

The Trump administration announced on Monday that it would be canceling $2.2 billion in federal funds to Harvard University after President Alan Garber said he would not cede to its demands. Many Jewish Harvard affiliates are wary of Trump’s aggressive intrusion into academia, while also calling for Harvard to take stronger action to address antisemitism. 

An April 11 letter from the Trump administration called for reforms to Harvard’s governance structure, its hiring of faculty, its admissions policies and its approach to antisemitism, with stringent federal reporting requirements, with all demands expected to be implemented by August. Attorneys for Harvard responded that Trump’s demands “go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration.” 

“The second Trump letter had demands that could charitably be called ridiculous, and the Trump administration must have known that Garber would have no choice but to reject them,” Jesse Fried, a Harvard Law School professor who has spoken publicly about increasing antisemitism and anti-Zionism at Harvard after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, told Jewish Insider. “They say that Trump is the great divider, but I’ve never seen anybody unify the Harvard faculty as successfully as he has.”

Rabbi David Wolpe, who was a visiting faculty member at Harvard Divinity School from 2023-2024, said he has no problem “with the general goals that are laid out” in Trump’s letter. But, Wolpe added, “I think this is a letter that will have a lot of unintended consequences, and it seems to me an overreach.” 

“I think there are people in the Trump administration — one or two of whom I’ve spoken to — who I know that this is a genuine cause of the heart for them, I have no doubt about that,” Wolpe said. “But I think there are a lot of other agendas swirling around that are not directly concerned with antisemitism.” 

Jewish leaders on Harvard’s campus called on the university to implement some of the federal government’s suggestions to crackdown on antisemitism, even if the university rejects making a formal deal with Trump.  

“Considering that there is wide support in the Harvard community and beyond for many of these policies and changes, they should have been put into place long ago,” Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, who leads Harvard Chabad, told JI. “It’s our hope that in wanting to demonstrate its independence, Harvard will not delay implementing further necessary changes, because an authority is trying to impose it on them.” 

Former Harvard President Lawrence Summers, who is still a professor at the university, praised Garber for “resisting extralegal and unreasonable demands from the federal government.” But just because Trump’s approach is the wrong one, Summers argued in a post on X, that doesn’t mean Harvard should ignore the issues raised in his letter.

“The wrongness of federal demands must not obscure the need for major reform to combat antisemitism, to promote genuine truth seeking, to venerate excellence and to ensure ideological diversity,” wrote Summers, who has been critical of Harvard’s handling of antisemitism after Oct. 7. 

One Harvard senior who has sharply criticized Harvard’s response to campus antisemitism, Jacob Miller, argued that Trump’s “crusade against Harvard” seeks to “hobble” the university, “the same way he has sought to incapacitate other perceived political enemies, including a number of law firms.”

Alex Bernat, a senior who is co-president of the Harvard Chabad Undergraduate Board, said that if Harvard is set on resisting the government’s demands, “then it is imperative Harvard release the steps they will take to further fix antisemitism here.”

Bernat praised some of the recent changes Harvard made in an attempt to combat antisemitism ahead of the government’s reforms, such as last month’s firing of two controversial heads of the university’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

“But [that is] not enough by any means and I’d like to see a concrete plan, whether developed internally at Harvard or agreed upon with the government,” he continued. “Additionally, I think Harvard ought to be careful about failing to take a given appropriate action merely because it was recommended from outside the university.” 

One nonprofit representing Harvard alumni calling for the school to make changes focused on promoting academic excellence, the 1636 Forum, has been highly critical of Harvard’s handling of campus protests after Oct. 7. 1636 Forum co-founder Allison Wu, a Harvard Business School alumna, said Garber should use this opportunity to clarify what reforms he will take.

“Harvard could benefit from publicly articulating a concrete roadmap for internal reforms and showing it can make swift, meaningful progress on that plan — even in the face of internal resistance or inertia,” Wu told JI. 

Rabbi Jason Rubenstein, executive director of Harvard Hillel, declined to weigh in on the issue. 

The funding freeze is already affecting major research projects at Harvard. Jeff Fredberg, a professor emeritus at the Harvard School of Public Health, has been meeting weekly with Jewish public health students, researchers and faculty over the past year, and the feeling among them now “is one of fear and depression.” 

“They’ve dedicated their whole life to this, and now I’m hearing from them, ‘What am I going to do? There are not going to be positions, or my lab is going to get closed, or has been closed,’” said Fredberg, who started meeting with the group amid increasing antisemitism within the public health field. He worries the federal actions will backfire for budding Jewish scientists. “These Jewish students are afraid there’s going to be a backlash, because the sciences are going to take the body blows on this, and ‘It’s going to be because of the Jews.’”

Harvard’s attorneys made clear the university will fight Trump, although the school has not yet announced plans to file litigation against the federal government. The Trump administration’s antisemitism task force stated on Monday that it will not let up on its demands.

“Harvard’s statement today reinforces the troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges — that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws,” the task force wrote in a press release announcing the funding pause. “It is time for elite universities to take the problem seriously and commit to meaningful change if they wish to continue receiving taxpayer support.” 

Trump added to Harvard’s worries on Tuesday by threatening to revoke the university’s tax-exempt status for “pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness.’”