Update 5/8/24: The House Oversight Committee cancelled the hearing after D.C. police began clearing the encampment overnight. As protests against the war in Gaza on campus have escalated, leading to clashes between demonstrators and police, a top Republican is scheduled to interrogate on Wednesday the D.C. mayor and her police chief over how they dealt with protests at George Washington University. Rep. James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky and chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, launched a probe into what he describes as “radical, antisemitic, and unlawful protesters ..read more

(JTA) — I grew up in a small Syrian Jewish enclave in Brooklyn in the 1960s. It was a wonderful community with many old-world traditions. I missed it when I grew up and moved to Manhattan. In the days before electronic marketing, I received tons of unsolicited mail. I also received mail that most people did not: donation requests from American Palestinian groups. If you were going through a phone book, you would definitely identify my last name as of Arabic origin and put me on the list. Like many Jews who had centuries-long roots in Arabic countries such as Syria, Lebanon, Libya and Jordan, m ..read more

(JTA) — One week after pro-Palestinian protesters who occupied a building at Columbia University were ejected and arrested, the rapper Macklemore has offered them an anthem. The nearly three-minute track, released Monday, is called “Hind’s Hall,” after the name the protesters gave Hamilton Hall, the building they took over, in honor of a Palestinian girl who died in Gaza during the current Israel-Hamas war. The song and accompanying video, which features clips from news broadcasts from Gaza and college campuses, has struck a chord, with more than 26 million views on Twitter alone as of We ..read more

UC Berkeley has opened a Title IX civil rights investigation after an April 9 confrontation between a professor and a Muslim law student at the professor’s home, the Bay Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations announced Tuesday. The investigation follows a complaint that Malak Afaneh, who is active in pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel protests at Cal, filed with the university’s Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination after the incident. The office focuses on compliance with policies related to sex, gender, sexual orientation, race, disability, religion and ot ..read more

Yom HaZikaron, or Israel’s Memorial Day, which honors the soldiers and others who have died defending the State of Israel, begins at sunset on Sunday, May 12. The next evening marks the start of Yom HaAtzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day. Local events observing these two holidays include survivor testimonies, candlelighting ceremonies, musical performances and community art projects. For more events, check out the community calendar on pages 26-27. Thursday, May 9 Yom Yisrael — Israel Independence Day party with dancing, community sing-along, children’s show, kosher kebabs, falafel, snow cones ..read more

A North Bay JCC has opened a southern hub. The Osher Marin Jewish Community Center in San Rafael now has a satellite campus in southern Marin, located about 10 miles from its primary home. Dubbed “JCC South,” the expansion site is located at 36 Tiburon Blvd. in Mill Valley. It’s meant to be “especially convenient for residents of Mill Valley, Tiburon, Belvedere, Strawberry, Sausalito and Marin City,” according to the Osher Marin JCC website. The 6,000-square-foot center, which formerly held offices, has two connected buildings with two food-prep areas. JCC South officially opened to the public ..read more

(JTA) — The social media company Meta is adjudicating whether a key phrase used by pro-Palestinian activists constitutes acceptable speech. The company’s Oversight Board, an independent body tasked with reviewing Meta’s content moderation decisions, has taken up the question as it reviews three cases involving posts that use the phrase “From the river to the sea.” The phrase has been used by Palestinian nationalist movements for decades, including by Hamas, and pro-Palestinian activists say it is a call for liberation. Israel and Jewish groups view it as advocating Israel’s destruction. I ..read more

This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox. They drew in secret, trading art for scraps of food and hiding paintings in jars and walls. But ultimately these Jewish artists working in concentration camps and ghettos during World War II created a record of their daily lives as Nazi prisoners. Their sketches and paintings documented the horrors they witnessed as well as their hopes and fantasies. Now work by 30 of these artists can be seen on a website, Art and the Holocaust, launched Monday to mark Yom HaShoa ..read more

WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Joe Biden aimed straight at American Jewish anxieties of the moment in a speech commemorating the Holocaust, pledging to keep alive the memory of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacres in the face of waves of anti-Israel and antisemitic actions. “I see your fear, your hurt, your pain,” Biden said Tuesday at the annual commemoration at the U.S. Capitol, organized by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Let me reassure you as your president, you are not alone.” The audience of Holocaust survivors, Jewish lawmakers, students and Jewish officials applauded. Biden’s pledge comes as I ..read more

Surrounded by students and faculty, the president of San Francisco State University met in public Monday afternoon with negotiators from the school’s pro-Palestinian encampment to discuss their demands over divestment from Israel. SFSU President Lynn Mahoney sat outside on the campus in front of a large group of onlookers, addressed questions and comments from students representing the encampment, and praised them as “exemplars.” Protesters livestreamed the negotiations on Instagram. “I welcome the opportunity to look at our investment policy to better align with our role as an agent of social ..read more