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| | | WHAT’S DRIVING THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONVERSATION |
| | Today: Assassinated Minnesota politician had ties to Jewish community • ADL leader resigns over Trump • Gov. Josh Shapiro opens up about arson attack • Alex Soros and Huma Abedin get married • and much more. |
| | | | Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump in April at the White House. (Getty) |
| Chaos at home and abroad: Israeli and Iranian attacks raised alarms about a widening regional war, while more than 2,000 anti-Trump protests erupted across the U.S. as the president staged a military parade in Washington. In Minnesota, a state lawmaker was assassinated — the latest flashpoint in rising political violence. Here’s what it all means for American Jews…
Will the U.S. get involved?
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday mounted a charm offensive aimed at drawing President Donald Trump into a more active role in dismantling Iran’s nuclear program, beyond the U.S. helping Israel defend itself against Iran’s missile attacks. “I trust his judgment completely,” Netanyahu told Fox News. Military experts point to the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, a nuclear facility buried deep beneath a mountain near Iran’s holy city of Qom, as likely out of reach for Israeli firepower alone. The U.S. possesses the bunker-busting munitions and stealth bombers needed for that mission.
Trump has so far resisted being drawn into a broader Middle East war, and reportedly opposed an Israeli plan to kill Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He said diplomacy remains the preferred path, posting on social media that “we will have peace soon,” adding, “Make the Middle East great again.”
Trump is walking a tightrope in his response so far, trying to please two factions within the Republican party: isolationists like Vice President JD Vance who don’t want the U.S. to involve itself in another country’s war; and the hawkish conservatives and evangelical Christians who want the U.S. to fight for Israel.
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| | Related… Right-wing media personality Tucker Carlson, who is close with President Trump, said that the U.S. should “drop Israel” and “let them fight their own wars.” (Jewish Insider)
Top Pentagon officials are split over Trump’s Israel policy and the extent of U.S. military aid to the Jewish state. (Semafor)
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| | A Jewish man carries his belongings on Monday at the site of an Iranian missile strike in Moshav Zavdiel in southern Israel. (Getty) |
| The latest… Iran has launched roughly 350 missiles at Israel since Friday, killing at least 24 and wounding hundreds more. (JTA, Times of Israel)
Five of those killed were Ukrainian nationals living near Tel Aviv. “They fled one war, only to find themselves in another,” Amit Segal, an Israeli news anchor, posted to social media. (Times of Israel, X)
Israel now has full control of Tehran’s airspace, according to the Israeli Defense Forces. (Times of Israel)
A high-level U.N. summit on an Israeli-Palestinian two-state solution, planned for this week, was delayed due to escalating tensions in the Middle East. (AP)
Persian Jews in the U.S. are watching the news with a sense of hope — saying it’s the first time in years the Iranian regime seems genuinely at risk. (Jewish Insider)
✈️ Planes at Ben-Gurion Airport remain grounded. Among the U.S. citizens stranded in Israel are CNN commentator Scott Jennings, as well as transgender activist Caitlyn Jenner and comedian Judy Gold — both of whom were scheduled to appear at the Tel Aviv Pride Parade Friday before it was canceled. (Hollywood Reporter, X) |
| | Our columnist Dan Perry, bottom left, in the bomb shelter of his Tel Aviv apartment building. (Courtesy) |
| First-person | Celebrating my daughter’s birthday in a bomb shelter, as missiles struck Tel Aviv: “Bleary-eyed neighbors are clogging the stairwell. Some are calm. Others, less so. It’s narrow, dim, chaotic,” writes our Israel-based columnist Dan Perry, whose daughter is home from college in the U.S.
“Down in the shelter, my wife is passing around a birthday cake. We weren’t supposed to be celebrating in a bomb shelter, but she made the cake before Iran’s attack started taking out buildings across the country. Neighbors smile politely. One man pats his belly to decline — no explanation needed. A little girl accepts a paper plate, followed by others, and also two adults who pretend to be interested.”
Someone served soft drinks. People played backgammon. Two docile Great Danes sat obediently. Then came the deafening explosions. Read his essay ►
Also from Dan: Israel’s strike on Iran was necessary. But for real change, the U.S. must join the fray
Stay updated with our Iran coverage.
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| | | | Melissa Hortman, then Speaker of the House in the Minnesota legislature, and her husband Mark at the Netiv HaAsara moshav in southern Israel in 2019. The couple’s trip was on a delegation with the Jewish Community Relations Council. (Courtesy JCRC of Minnesota and the Dakotas) |
| Melissa Hortman, the former Minnesota Speaker of the House, was assassinated with her husband early Saturday. State Sen. John Hoffman Champlin was shot along with his wife. Both politicians were friends to Minnesota’s Jewish community. (Forward)
► After a two-day manhunt, police found the suspect in both shootings and arrested him last night. (AP)
Elsewhere…
Several rabbis attended the nationwide “No Kings” rallies on Saturday, including: “I think about my own neighbors in this city being rounded up. It is just morally shameful,” said Rabbi Julie Greenberg, in Philadelphia, the epicenter of the movement. Added Rabbi David Bauer: “Resistance needs to be visible.” (WPVI, CBS News)
Rabbi Kolby Morris-Dahary sang at the rally in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. (Steamboat Pilot)
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| | Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt speaks at the group’s national conference in March. (Getty) |
| Longtime ADL leader resigns, blasts CEO
After 30 years, Steven Ludwig resigned from the board of the Anti-Defamation League’s Philadelphia chapter in a scathing letter to Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s CEO. He cited a shift in the civil rights group’s focus to a “misguided use of antisemitism as cover to implement authoritarianism.” He repeatedly cited passages from Greenblatt’s 2022 book It Could Happen Here, which condemned authoritarianism. “Not only could it happen here, Jonathan, it is happening here,” Ludwig added in the letter. “Read your damn book.” Go deeper ►
Opinion | Trump’s latest move makes Mahmoud Khalil a Joseph for our times: The Trump administration says it won’t release Khalil, a Columbia University pro-Palestinian leader jailed for three months, despite a judge’s order. Our columnist Emily Tamkin sees a parallel from the biblical Pharaoh. “For a person’s fate to be dictated by whims and arguments that shift like sand undercuts the rule of law,” she writes. Read her essay ►
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| | | | Barbara Walters talks with Muammar el-Qaddafi from his tent in Tripoli, Libya in 1989. (Courtesy ABC News) |
| Two legends, unfiltered
Here are a couple new documentaries we’re watching…
Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything, arriving on Hulu on June 23, explores Walters’ personal life as well as her career, including a race against Walter Cronkite to score an interview with Israeli president Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1977. The film also “explores the misogyny she faced throughout her career and the complicated personal life she navigated alongside it,” writes our Olivia Haynie. Read her review ►
Andy Kaufman Is Me, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival this month, features highlights from 84 hours of previously unheard recordings, taped by Kaufman throughout his life, of phone conversations, fights with girlfriends, performances and ideas, allowing the comedic performer to speak in his own words. It offers a more “holistic” and “vulnerable” portrait, writes our PJ Grisar. Read his review ► |
| | | | WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY |
| | A brick thrown through the window of The Butcherie, a kosher grocery, in Brookline, Massachusetts. (Brookline Police Department). |
| 🧱 A masked vandal hurled a brick inscribed with “Free Palestine” through the window of a kosher grocery in Brookline, Massachusetts, early Sunday, shattering glass that displayed a map of Israel and its wineries. (JTA, NBC Boston)
🇫🇷 Three French teens were sentenced for the gang rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl near Paris in 2024, with two receiving prison terms and the youngest placed in foster care due to his age. (Times of Israel)
🇵🇸 Tens of thousands rallied at pro-Palestinian events this weekend in Belgium, France and the Netherlands. (AFP)
🎙️ New York City Mayor Eric Adams joined a livestream Saturday with Sneako, a right-wing internet figure known for spreading controversial and antisemitic views. (Gothamist)
📚 In honor of what would have been Anne Frank’s 96th birthday this month, the Center for Jewish History in New York gave away 10,000 copies of her diary. (New York Jewish Week)
👩❤️👨 Alex Soros, son of billionaire philanthropist and Holocaust survivor George Soros, married Huma Abedin, longtime Hillary Clinton aide and ex-wife of former congressman Anthony Weiner, in a lavish Saturday ceremony. The day prior, a rabbi and an imam officiated at a smaller service to honor the couple’s faiths. (New York Times)
Shiva calls ► Marthe Cohn, a wartime Jewish nurse who spied on the Nazis, died at 105 … Leonard Lauder, who built his mother’s beauty business into the Estée Lauder global empire, died at 92 … Harris Yulin, a prolific actor known for playing bad guys and who was inspired to pursue acting after taking center stage at his bar mitzvah, died at 87 … Joel Shapiro, a sculptor known for his minimalist style and whose work graces the plaza of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in D.C., died at 83.
What else we’re reading ► Who is Bradley Sherman, the husband of an Iranian princess and the first Jew to become a member of the Iranian royal family? (Jewish Chronicle) … Antisemitism is an urgent problem. Too many people are making excuses (New York Times) … Aaron Lansky built a home for 1.5 million Yiddish books. Now he’s handing over the keys. (JTA) |
| | | | Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro gave his first extensive interview about the night his residence was set on fire hours after his family hosted a Passover Seder. “We have to create space in our politics, in our civil society for dialogue about differences on the Middle East, but never use that as an excuse for antisemitism,” Shapiro said, adding that he thought President Trump uses antisemitism to politicize hatred. |
| Thanks to Jacob Kornbluh for contributing to today’s newsletter, and to Julie Moos for editing it. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at [email protected]. |
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