JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.

WHAT’S DRIVING THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONVERSATION

Good morning. Today: The antisemitic rhetoric of RFK Jr.; arrests at Israel-France soccer match; and yet another Kanye West antisemitism scandal (yes, really).

A SECOND TRUMP TERM

(iStock by Getty Images)

What a Trump second presidency will mean for school prayer, campus antisemitism and other education issues Jews care about. President-elect Donald Trump has promised to bring back school prayer, and threatened to eliminate the Department of Education. “Regardless of who Trump taps to lead the department, Jewish groups and education experts are concerned about the president-elect giving wide berth to Christian nationalists who believe the country needs more religious influence on public education,” writes our Lauren Markoe. Read the story ►

Plus…

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, has a history of antisemitic rhetoric, including a 2023 claim that “COVID had been ‘ethnically targeted’ to avoid ‘Ashkenazic Jews and Chinese.’” (JTA)

Colorado’s Jewish governor, Jared Polis, who earlier this week announced he would co-chair a group to help states push back against Trump’s policies, initially greeted Kennedy’s nomination with enthusiasm before clarifying that he opposes “RFK’s positions on a host issues.” Kennedy’s response? Thanking “Governor Polish.” (ABC News, Colorado Sun, X)

Elon Musk, who has taken on a key role in managing Trump’s transition to the White House, reportedly met with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations earlier this week to discuss reducing American tensions with the Middle Eastern power. (New York Times)

A screenshot of Rabbi Julie Roth delivering a post-election sermon. (Courtesy of Congregation Shomrei Emunah)

Opinion | Like our patriarch Abraham, American Jews face 10 post-election tests of our values. The vast majority of U.S. Jews voted for Vice President Kamala Harris; many of those voters had deep concerns about what Trump’s second presidency could mean for the country’s future. Here to help them make sense of those concerns: The same texts that have guided Jews for centuries. In her first sermon after the election, Rabbi Julie Roth of Montclair, N.J., spoke about the 10 trials of Abraham, which “helped define the values that have guided the Jewish people ever since.” U.S. Jews face 10 similar trials, she said, as, like Abraham, “we now face a journey to an unknown destination.” Read her essay ►

Opinion | Mike Huckabee’s old-school Christian Zionism is bad news for anyone who wants Middle East peace. Huckabee, Trump's pick for ambassador to Israel, adheres to a strain of Christian theology that sees brutal wars in Israel as an essential prerequisite to Christ’s return. “It is the fatalistic future history evangelicals imagine for Israel that has helped give rise to opportunists like Trump, who hope to pander to the evangelical base,” writes Tristan Sturm, a scholar who has long studied Huckabee’s particular practice of Christian Zionism. “As ambassador to Israel, Huckabee will only advance that cause.” Read his essay ►

– From our Sponsor –

ALSO IN THE FORWARD

The memorial, located at 27 Madison Avenue, was created in 1990 by Harriet Feigenbaum. (Mia Faye Kreindler)

Hidden in plain sight, a Holocaust memorial takes on new significance. “Even though it stands 38-feet tall, the Holocaust Memorial outside Madison Square Park is easy to miss,” writes Mia Faye Kreindler. “I live near Madison Square Park, but I didn’t notice until one day when I was walking and the silver plaque next to the memorial was glistening in the sun.” The 1990 work by the artist Harriet Feigenbaum features a phrase its artist finds once more, unfortunately, timely: “Indifference to injustice is the gate to hell.”

When Robert Moses laid waste to the Jewish Bronx, was he trying to obliterate his Jewish heritage?A New York Historical Society exhibit honoring Moses’ acclaimed biographer, Robert Caro, may leave visitors saying “todah rabah to the max for Caro’s extraordinary achievement” in examining the history of both Moses and President Lyndon B. Johnson, writes Diane Cole. “Most of all, what both NYHS exhibits demonstrate is how Caro plied his talents — and his doggedness —as an investigative journalist nonpareil.”

Plus: The California man convicted of the 2018 murder of Blaze Bernstein, a gay, Jewish teenager, faces sentencing today. Catch up on our Louis Keene’s masterful coverage of the trial. Read more ►

READERS LIKE YOU SHAPE EVERY PART OF OUR WORK

While the Forward is now free to read, it isn’t free to produce. As a nonprofit, member-supported newsroom, we answer to our readers, not to institutions.

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

Haredi Jews protest conscription into the IDF in late October. (Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images)

On Israel…

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz — who is new in the role after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s firing of his prominent critic Yoav Gallant last week — approved the issuance of 7,000 new draft notices to Haredi Jews, escalating tensions over the recent end of their longstanding exemption from the draft. (Times of Israel)

Iranian officials indicated the country is prepared to broadly support Lebanon in seeking a ceasefire with Israel amid the conflict’s significant costs for Hezbollah, which is closely affiliated with the Iranian regime. (Reuters)

Several freed hostages met with Pope Francis in Rome to advocate for a deal to free the hostages who remain in Gaza. (Associated Press)

Almost 90 Democrats in Congress called on President Joe Biden to sanction the far-right Israeli ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir during his lame-duck period. (JTA)

“Israeli authorities on Thursday completed the demolition of a village at the heart of a yearslong struggle by members of the country’s Arab Bedouin minority against relocation plans,” reports the Associated Press. (AP)

In Europe…

Police arrested 40 people at a soccer match featuring an Israeli team in Paris, after violent attacks on Israeli fans marked a similar game in Amsterdam last week. (AFP)

More than 5,000 protesters at the Lithuanian parliament in Vilnius decried the Social Democrats, the party that won the country’s most recent elections, for forming a governing coalition with a party whose leader is facing trial over antisemitic statements. (Reuters)

In music…

A new lawsuit claims that the rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, accused his ex-wife, Kim Kardashian, of having “Jewish masters” — the latest in Ye’s long history of antisemitic scandals. (Variety)

An operatic adaptation of Michael Chabon’s novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay will have its world premiere tonight in Indiana, before moving to New York’s Metropolitan Opera next season. (Associated Press)

What else we’re reading ► After a devastating fire, Notre Dame cathedral is preparing to reopen …“A brief history of the many times Jewish theater has been censored” … “How the Mideast war has shaken America’s cultural institutions.”

VIDEO OF THE DAY

Head into the weekend with a bit of comic relief: A scene from the Marx Brothers movie A Night at the Opera, released on this day in 1935.

Thanks to Benyamin Cohen for contributing to today’s newsletter, and to Julie Moos for editing it. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at [email protected].

Jewish journalism you can trust!

Without you, the Forward’s stories don’t just go unread — they go untold. Please support our nonprofit journalism today.