WHAT’S DRIVING THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONVERSATION

Today: Judge rules on deportation of Columbia’s Mahmoud Khalil • Trump and Harvard near compromise • Americans’ support of Israel drops to lowest level in decades • and how the Forward covered LGBTQ+ history.

FIRST IN FORWARDING

The golf course at the Boca Grove neighborhood in Boca Raton, Florida. (Courtesy Boca Grove)

How Jewish can you be in a Boca country club?

What began as a two-minute ritual in a gated Florida community has escalated into a federal civil rights case — and the latest flashpoint over religious expression in shared spaces. I spoke with both sides to find out how tefillin became the center of a culture war in Boca Raton.

• What happened: Isaac Scharf lives in Boca Grove, a community of 400+ homes with a golf course, pool, and clubhouse. He invited Jewish comedian Jake Adams — who has nearly 2 million social media followers — to film a video that included Scharf wrapping tefillin on him inside the club.

  
  

• The fallout: The homeowners association suspended Scharf and his family for 90 days, barred them from club events, and deactivated their automatic gate access.

  
  

• The response: Boca Grove said it acted after “feedback from multiple members — Orthodox and non-Orthodox alike — who felt the behavior depicted in a publicly circulated video mocked sacred traditions in a way they found deeply offensive.”

  
  

• What’s next: The Scharfs’ suspension ended Monday. Now they’re suing for religious discrimination — and seeking $50 million in damages.

ISRAEL

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended the address of Argentinian President Javier Milei to the Israeli Knesset on Wednesday.

A failed bid to dissolve Israel’s parliament early today — over disagreements on military exemptions for religious students — exposed deep rifts in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, leaving him politically weakened. Here’s more news from Israel…

• Israel is gearing up for a possible imminent strike on Iran — a move that could disrupt or postpone the Trump administration’s push for a nuclear deal. (JTA)

  
  

• Amid rising tensions, the U.S. is pulling nonessential embassy staff from Baghdad and relocating military families in the Gulf, with President Donald Trump warning the region “could be a dangerous place” and vowing to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. (Axios)

  
  

• The Israeli military said Wednesday evening that it had retrieved the body of Yair Yaakov, a Kibbutz Nir Oz resident abducted on October 7, along with the remains of another hostage whose identity has not been publicly released. (Haaretz, Times of Israel)

  
  

• The Gaza Health Ministry said the Palestinian death toll in the 20-month Israel-Hamas war has surpassed 55,000. Israel maintains it targets militants and blames Hamas for civilian casualties due to its operations in densely populated areas. (AP)

  
  

• Members of several Jewish Voice for Peace chapters across the U.S. are taking turns fasting to bring attention to the food crisis in Gaza. The group said the fast will continue until there is a full resumption of humanitarian aid. (Religion News Service)

  
  

• A new poll shows 37% of American voters side with Israelis and 32% with Palestinians — the lowest support for Israel and highest for Palestinians since the question was first asked in 2001. Another 31% didn’t take a side. (Quinnipiac University)

  
  

• During a three-day visit to Israel, Argentinian President Javier Milei announced Wednesday plans to relocate his country’s embassy from the Tel Aviv area to Jerusalem next year. (Times of Israel)

Opinion | Mike Huckabee’s stunning, terrifying new gift to the Israeli right: The ambassador to Israel said that the U.S. is no longer pursuing the goal of an independent Palestinian state — and that, if one were created, it should be carved out of “a Muslim country,” rather than Gaza or the West Bank. Our Tel Aviv-based columnist, Dan Perry, explains what that would mean, and offers several alternatives. Read his essay ►

THROWBACK THURSDAY

The Forward’s front page on May 7, 1933, the day it reported on the arson attack at an institute run by a Jewish sexologist researching the LGBTQ+ community. (Forward Archives)

In honor of Pride Month, our Chana Pollack and Talya Zax pored through more than a century of our archives to create a timeline of how the Forward covered LGBTQ+ history — including the burning of the Hirschfeld Institute, where the sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld and his staff provided groundbreaking care for LGBTQ+ people in Nazi Germany. See the timeline ►

In a separate piece, Chana looks back at the queer stories we covered — and some that we missed. “The Forward’s archive reminds me, a queer Yiddish archivist, of poet Marge Piercy’s description of poems as being made of sounds and silences,” she writes. “Our archives echo with vanished histories.” Read her essay ►

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

Demonstrators gather outside the federal courthouse in New York City in March to show support for Columbia student activist Mahmoud Khalil. (Getty)

On campus…

⚖️  A federal judge ruled that Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian protest leader at Columbia University and legal permanent resident, cannot be held or deported, clearing the way for his possible release by Friday. (JTA)

🤝  Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said that the Trump administration is nearing a compromise with Harvard that could possibly see the unfreezing of billions of dollars in federal aid. (Algemeiner, Bloomberg)

💰  Hillel International is hiring for a new position — VP of Faculty Programs and Initiatives — aimed at addressing antisemitism among college faculty. The job will pay between $175,000-$215,000. (Inside Higher Ed)

✏️  A study guide for the 10th grade New York State Regents Exam that calls Zionism “an example of extreme nationalism” is drawing outrage. Rep. Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, called it “a total amoral abomination”; the state education board said it had not approved the guide. (Forward)

🎒 Seven families in Arkansas — including Jewish, Unitarian Universalist, and nonreligious households — filed a lawsuit Wednesday arguing that a new state law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public school classrooms violates their constitutional rights. (AP)

And elsewhere…

👮  The Trump administration is planning to shut down an $18 million Department of Homeland Security program designed to prevent domestic terror attacks — a move former officials and experts warn could increase the risk of violence, especially from lone-wolf attackers like those behind recent incidents in Boulder, D.C., New Orleans, and New York. (NBC News)

🇫🇷  Almost a year after a 12-year-old Jewish girl was raped in France, three teens went on trial Wednesday in a case that rattled the local Jewish community and sparked global outrage amid rising antisemitism. (Jerusalem Post)

🏳️‍🌈  Caitlyn Jenner, the former Olympian and a leading figure in the transgender community, is set to participate for the first time in Tel Aviv’s Pride Parade on Friday. (Times of Israel)

What we’re watching ► Between the Temples, the 2024 film starring Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane as a cantor tutoring a late-in-life bat mitzvah, is now available to stream on Netflix. Our reviewer called it “an indie Chelm story and a mumblecore Midrash.”

VIDEO OF THE DAY

Our senior political reporter, Jacob Kornbluh, was a guest on Spectrum News last night talking about the importance of the Orthodox vote in the upcoming mayoral race in New York City, home to the largest concentration of Jews outside of Israel.

• Related: New York City mayors have been traveling to Israel for decades as a way to shore up votes from their Jewish constituents. Our Clara Shapiro looks back at 11 of those trips — including that time Michael Bloomberg tried to introduce Sesame Street to Israeli and Palestinian children. Go deeper ►

  
  

• One of our most-read stories this week: Our Hannah Feuer ranked the candidates exclusively based on their bagel orders. Spoiler alert: Andrew Cuomo’s “bacon, cheese and egg on an English muffin” came in dead last. See the rankings ►

Today’s newsletter made me:

🤓 Confident I understand issues impacting American Jews.

🔗 Connected to the Jewish world.

💡 Curious to learn about something I read.

🤷🏽‍♀️ No different.

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