In Jewish News This Week

May 16, 2025

Check Out What's Going on In the World

Hamas Releases Edan Alexander, Last Living American Hostage - Joy, tears, and jubilation—this was the environment in which Edan Alexander, a dual Israeli-American citizen held hostage by Hamas, returned to this week. Edan was kidnapped during the Oct 7. attacks, and he had been in confinement for over a year-and-a-half. We highly recommend watching the video of his homecoming; it will likely move you to tears. While the Jewish community celebrates Edan’s return, our hearts and prayers turn to the 58 remaining hostages held in the Gaza strip. We await their return as we continue to mourn the loss of all life in this terrible conflict.


Worldwide Jewish Community Celebrates Lag BaOmer - Today, Jewish communities from around the world celebrate Lag BaOmer. Lag BaOmer marks the 33rd day of the 49-day Omer count between Passover and Shavuot. The Omer count commemorates the 49-day period between Passover and Shavuot—during which Jews count each day as a reminder of the time spent in the wilderness before arriving at Mount Sinai.


Lag BaOmer is a break from the period of semi-mourning observed during the Omer count, and is meant to be a day of joy. One iconic custom is to light bonfires to symbolize the light of Torah. In fact, a Lag BaOmer celebration is happening in very own community tonight: Chabad of Maine is presenting a Jewish Family Festival complete with all-you-can-eat BBQ, a petting zoo, and a bonfire. You can register for the event, which is open to all, here.


Pesach Sheni - This week also marked the commemoration of Pesach Sheni, or “Second Passover.” Pesach Sheni, meaning "Second Passover," is a Jewish holiday observed exactly one month after the main Passover (Pesach). In the time of the Temple, it provided a second opportunity for individuals who were unable to observe Passover due to ritual impurity, distance from Jerusalem, or other circumstances. While Pesach Sheni is not widely observed today, it has become an “unofficial holiday” promoting LGBTQ+ acceptance within Jewish communities. You can read more about the transformation of Pesach Sheni in The Times of Israel.


Israel-Hamas War Continues - Israel held its breath this week upon reports that the IDF may have killed Muhammad Sinwar, the brother of Yahya Sinwar and an architect of the 10/7 attacks. Muhammad Sinwar became the militant group’s de facto leader after the Israeli military killed his brother, Yahya Sinwar, last October. 


In a statement, the IDF said it carried out a strike on the European hospital in Khan Yhounis—beneath which it believed Hamas had created a “command and control center,” purposefully using the hospital as a large human shield. In response to the news, former US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro said “There is little chance the war can end before [Muhammad Sinwar] dies….his removal could open the door for the release of all hostages and beginning to move toward a post-war future for Gaza without Hamas.”

Other Articles

July 18, 2025
Nation’s Largest Teacher’s Union Votes to Sever Ties with ADL, JCA Responds This month, the US’s largest teacher’s union, the National Education Association (NEA)—which is also the teacher’s union of Maine—voted to cut all ties with the ADL: banning their lessons on antisemitism, Holocaust education, and Jewish-American history. According to the proposal, the “NEA will not use, endorse, or publicize any materials from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), such as its curricular materials or its statistics…NEA will not participate in ADL programs or publicize ADL professional development offerings.” This vote will now head to the Executive Committee of the NEA for final approval. This is an incredibly disconcerting development. While the ADL does not represent the views of the entire Jewish community, it has built widely respected anti-bias and Holocaust education curricula that are acclaimed for their effectiveness in progressive, centrist, and right-leaning spaces. Banning the ADL will eradicate a pillar of Jewish-American education and handicap the American Jewish community’s ability to fight rising antisemitism in schools. We here at Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine joined 378 other Jewish organizations last week in a joint letter to the NEA’s Executive Committee, strongly urging them to veto this resolution. Along with our friends at the Jewish Federations of North America and Jewish Council for Public Affairs, we are closely monitoring this situation so we can best support Jewish parents and educators in Maine. You can read the communal letter with our organization’s name on it here , and learn more about the situation on Axios . New Polish Plaques Deny Complicity With Nazis When Jews gathered this week for the anniversary of a World War II massacre in the Polish town of Jedwabne, they saw a new installation—one that denied a historical consensus about the grievous events that unfolded there. At the same time, a far-right lawmaker interrupted the memorial gathering — and triggered a police investigation by calling the gas chambers at Auschwitz “fake.” Thursday marked 84 years since the crimes in Jedwabne, a town of less than 2,000 people northeast of Warsaw. In 1941, local residents killed hundreds of their Jewish neighbors, most of them in a barn where they were burned alive. An official investigation by Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance confirmed in 2002 that the murder was carried out by Poles. But Jedwabne has become a flashpoint in Polish politics, with some far-right politicians claiming it was Germans who perpetrated the massacre and characterizing research on Polish complicity as part of an effort to slander their nation. Read more about this disturbing controversy at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency . Five Hebron Sheikhs Break Away from Palestinian Authority and Call for Peace With Israel Five leading Hebron sheikhs, headed by Sheikh Wadee’ al‑Jaabari, have asked Israeli Economy Minister Nir Barkat to let Hebron break from the Palestinian Authority and form an “Emirate of Hebron” that would fully recognize Israel as the Jewish state and join the Abraham Accords. The clan leaders have pledged zero tolerance for terror and proposed a joint economic zone that could employ tens of thousands of Palestinians inside Israel. The initiative has drawn cautious interest in Jerusalem, underscoring mounting frustration with the Palestinian Authority among many West Bank Palestinians. If it moves forward, Hebron could become the first Palestinian‑led experiment in clan‑based self‑rule and economic partnership under the wider Abraham Accords umbrella. Read more at The Times of Israel.
July 15, 2025
Honoring the Legacy of Norman I. Godfrey
July 9, 2025
Last month, the Jewish Community Alliance here in Portland, as well as another synagogue in Portland, received a letter. Its typewritten message was simple: “I will kill all at this location for Palestine for Russia.” It hurts to admit that I wasn’t surprised. Since I began my role a few months ago, there has been what feels like at times a firehose of Jew-hatred: on my very first day of work, a white nationalist emailed hundreds of staff members at Portland schools a vile article with racist drawings of Jews lifted straight from Nazi Germany. I have learned of Jewish children finding swastikas scribbled on their belongings at Southern Maine schools. I’ve corresponded with a Jewish woman who was told on a Portland bus that she “belonged in a cemetery” for wearing a Star of David. This isn’t just inflamed rhetoric. In the last two months, there have been two deadly terrorist attacks against the American Jewish community: a firebombing in Boulder, Colorado which killed an elderly Holocaust survivor, and a shooting at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, in which a gunman yelling “Free Palestine” shot and killed Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgram. The irony is that both Yaron and Sarah were peacemakers: Sarah volunteered at an advocacy group which trains young Palestinians and Israelis to work together, and Yaron worked at the Israeli embassy, with a focus on building bridges with the Arab world. Our CEO, Leslie Kirby, and I were at the very same Capital Jewish Museum last month for a conference. In a sad reminder of our new norm, we were told to hide our presence there—no posting, no pictures—until after the event had concluded. There at the museum where the makeshift sidewalk memorial to Yaron and Sarah still gathered fresh flowers, we bowed our heads for a long moment of silence. I looked up to see faces filled with glistening tears—people who knew Yaron and Sarah personally. With these events playing in my mind, I recently went to the synagogue in Portland which had also received a death threat letter. An armed guard greeted us at the door. Sitting there, I wished that modern antisemites could see the room. It was a beautiful, diverse gathering of people, simply thanking God for giving us the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, known to Christians as the Old Testament). We prayed for peace, we read from the Torah, we sang the songs of our ancestors. Grandparents, parents, children, babies. I wish that these Jew-haters could see the works of the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine, and all the good deeds it does in the community. Every day, I am awed by my coworkers at the JCA, who in the last year alone have distributed over 46,000 diapers, 11,000 menstrual pads, and 500 pairs of winter boots to Mainers in need; they’ve helped hundreds of refugees secure life-saving medical care, housing, and first jobs; they’ve created “Mitzvah Days” where Jewish volunteers package meals for the needy and clean up Maine trails; they lend our space out to diverse cultural groups, including hosting last month’s World Refugee Day. It is incredible what the people on our staff do on a daily basis. It is fully in line with the Jewish value of Tikkun Olam—the practice of repairing our broken world. And yet, there are groups that not only wish for Jewish death, but celebrate it. After the Capital Jewish Museum shooting, the DSA Liberation Caucus, which is a subgroup of the Democratic Socialists of America but does not speak for the organization as a whole, posted a picture of the shooter, Elias Rodriguez, with the words “Build the International Popular Cradle of Resistance!” underneath him. Their statement read: “Rodriguez’ targeted attack on two Israeli diplomatic staff on May 21, 2025 was a legitimate act of resistance…[his] act was fully justified.” They might as well have continued: slaughter anyone associated with Israel or Judaism, and you will be glorified. I have no doubt that were a terrible attack to happen to the Maine Jewish community, those same people would gleefully celebrate it. But we know this is absolutely not true of the Portland or Maine community at large. Just like we as a Jewish community condemn prejudice and hatred, just as we as a society can condemn racism and homophobia and Islamophobia, so too should we identify and condemn Jew-hatred—whether it emerges from bigots who wrongfully exploit the Palestinian cause to kill, threaten, or bully Jewish people, or from losers who drape themselves in the fetid symbols of Neo-Nazism. We very much look forward to tackling this issue of antisemitism together as a community. Please continue to read for an update of what we’ve done so far, and an invitation to join our work.
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