Money Lost Florida's Senate Primary

New York City schools have logged at least 250 antisemitic and anti-Israel incidents since Oct. 7, 2023, per a report the teachers' group United Jewish Teachers sent Mayor Mamdani's office this month. Two-thirds were harassment, threats, assaults, or hate symbols. Union president Moshe Spern: antisemitism "remains a serious and ongoing problem" in the schools. ¹

The EU is drafting sanctions against Israel if construction starts on E1, the corridor that would cut the West Bank in two by connecting Jerusalem to Ma'ale Adumim. Diplomats told Channel 13 the plan includes labeling all Israeli exports, not just settlement goods. Israel issued tenders this week for 1,234 housing units there; Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich says the project "practically erases the two-state delusion." ²

New York's Jewish establishment is losing patience with Mayor Mamdani. Eric Fingerhut, head of the Jewish Federations of North America, said Mamdani's rhetoric "incited and contributed to incitement to violence," days after a man who told investigators he "identified as Jewish" attacked worshippers at Central Synagogue. Gov. Kathy Hochul's response: focus on "blocking and tackling of city government." ³⁴

Florida held primaries Tuesday, and the results don't fit one story about Jews and politics.

In the 6th Congressional District, Rep. Randy Fine beat Dan Bilzerian, who ran on open antisemitism, posted "the Jew is scared," and put out an ad invoking Hitler. Fine won 56.7% to 18%. ⁵

In the 25th, Rep. Jared Moskowitz, an AIPAC-endorsed congressman and one of Israel's more consistent defenders in the House, beat DSA anti-Zionist challenger Oliver Larkin 64% to 36%, in a district redistricting just made whiter and more Republican but still about a quarter Jewish. Moskowitz outraised him 11 to 1 and skipped the debate. ⁶

Then the Senate primary flipped the pattern. Alex Vindman, the retired lieutenant colonel who testified against Trump in his first impeachment, raised more than $16 million. Angie Nixon, a Democratic Socialist state lawmaker from Jacksonville who wants to end U.S. military aid to Israel, raised under $1 million and beat him anyway. Vindman refused her request to debate and ran a campaign built for national media instead of Florida's Democratic primary electorate, strategists on both sides said afterward. Nixon's read: "We were outspent 16 to one, and we won." ⁷

Hey Alma's Elul shopping guide runs 19 items deep. Molly Yeh designed a $24 stoneware honey pot for Anthropologie, for people who've been using the plastic bear too long. ModernTribe sells a $28.50 autumn-harvest-scented candle called Shana Tova, built around Rosh Hashanah's apple-dipping ritual. Pushcart Judaica sells a kit for the old Ashkenazi practice of hand-rolling your own memorial candles during Elul, which is either the most spiritual craft project of the year or the least relaxing one. ⁸

Rabbi Marc Angel told a Sephardic rabbinic conference this week that you preserve fish and fruit, things that are dead, and that a living tradition should grow instead. He was talking about Sephardic Judaism. He might as well have been talking about the American Jewish institutional budget. We fund preservation: archives, heritage months, continuity studies, panels about the continuity studies. Angel's congregation has been open since 1654, and it did not get there by being careful. Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews are about a tenth of American Jewry and show up to Jewish life at higher rates than the rest of us, which is worth more than another survey asking why nobody shows up. ⁹

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara wants more Haredi men actually drafted, so the Finance Ministry ran the subsidy numbers to see how lopsided things actually were, and even the government seemed surprised by its own math. Haredi households get municipal tax breaks at more than four times the rate of other Jewish Israelis, 72% versus 17%. They're twelve times as likely to land a favorable mortgage, and 95% of them get discounted transit versus 23% of everyone else. None of the rules mention Haredim by name. They just happen to reward large families in a handful of specific cities, which happens to describe the Haredi community almost exactly. Nearly a third of Haredi households are still below the poverty line, and somehow both of those numbers are true at once. ¹⁰ The backstory →

Hero: Daphne Barak-Erez. She was one of three Supreme Court justices, with colleagues Kasher and Stein, who unanimously struck down the government's push to close Army Radio this week. Defense Minister Israel Katz had ordered it shut, claiming the station hurt wartime morale and didn't reflect the public. The court found no "evidentiary basis" for that. Justice Kasher: "it's unconscionable that someone with governing authority will decide that, since they don't like a broadcaster's words, the broadcaster's microphone must be shut off." ¹¹

Villain: Carmella Charrington. The Brooklyn Democratic district leader blamed "Zionists" for deed theft on a podcast this month, the latest entry in a pattern; she's previously shared content referencing antisemitic conspiracy theories. Party chair Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn and other Brooklyn Democrats are now calling for her resignation. Bichotte Hermelyn: "Antisemitism has no place in Brooklyn. That kind of rhetoric is unacceptable from anyone entrusted with Democratic leadership, and it demands immediate accountability and reflection." ¹²

Parashat Ki Teitzei again this week, still the portion with the most individual commandments in the Torah. For the table: Polish journalist Kazimierz Moczarski shared a Warsaw prison cell with Jürgen Stroop, the SS general who leveled the Warsaw Ghetto, for 255 days in 1949. Their conversations just got their first full English translation, 77 years later. ¹⁴