(JTA) – A pro-Palestinian protest at Yale University allegedly turned violent with dozens of arrests. The University of Southern California canceled all its planned commencement speakers. Encampments have sprung up at campuses from Boston to Ann Arbor and Chapel Hill. It’s not just Columbia: The unrest that has overtaken the Ivy League university in New York City, and upended life for Jewish students and everyone else, is spilling over into the rest of the country. The spread of the demonstrations is being promoted and celebrated by pro-Palestinian activists, including the anti-Zionist Jewish ..read more

(New York Jewish Week) – An outspoken Israeli professor was blocked from entering a portion of the Columbia University campus and Jewish members of Congress demanded action from the administration on Monday as pro-Palestinian protests continued to roil the Manhattan university. Shai Davidai, an Israeli assistant professor at Columbia University’s business school, had announced on social media that he planned to enter the university’s main campus on Monday morning to hold a “peaceful sit in” in the area of pro-Palestinian demonstrators who have occupied the campus lawn since last week. But the ..read more

(New York Jewish Week) — When Rabbi Albert Thaler was invited to run Ramah Day Camp in Nyack in 1970 it had neither staff nor campers. It did have a site — a campus in New York’s Rockland County that had hosted American Seminar, a program for youngsters who were unable to attend one of the Conservative movement’s signature programs in Israel.  Over the next few years, Thaler would build “Ramah Nyack” into one of the most successful camps in the Ramah network, drawing devoted campers from New Jersey, Queens, Manhattan and New York’s Westchester County.  Perhaps as importantly, it deve ..read more

(JTA) — Israel’s military intelligence chief resigned, saying he assumed responsibility for the intelligence failures that failed to prevent the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion that launched the current war. The resignation letter Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva sent Monday to the Israeli military chief of staff, Lt. Herzi Halevi, is unusual in that he assumed responsibility for the failures even before the launch of a state inquiry into the missteps that left Israel unprepared for the attack. “The intelligence division under my command did not live up to the mission we were sworn to,” Haliva wrote in his lette ..read more

(JTA) — Why are these macaroons different from all other macaroons? It’s a question that many American Jews may find themselves asking this Passover, and the answer will be: how they’re packaged. That’s because Manischewitz, the iconic purveyor of kosher-for-Passover products, has shaken up its look, eschewing macaroon canisters for resealable bags, splashing the orange from its old logo all over its matzah boxes and covering its packaging with playful cartoon figures. It has won new fans in the process. “I told my mom her Manischewitz box was yassified,” read one representative tweet about th ..read more

TEL AVIV (JTA) — This year, Noam Safir and her family will order takeout for the Passover seder because her mother Moshit has no energy to cook a festive meal, as she has done in past years. Moshit is the daughter of the oldest Israeli hostage held by Hamas — Shlomo Mansour, 86. “It’s going to be less of a celebration and more of marking the holiday,” Safir, 20, told reporters in a video call this week. It’s a sentiment that is widely shared this year by families of the hostages and the millions of Jews in Israel and around the world who have mounted a sweeping advocacy campaign pressing for t ..read more

(JTA) — As of early March, five months into Israel’s war with Hamas, American Jews felt close to Israel but were also likely to feel uncomfortable with its government’s actions, according to a Jewish Federations of North America poll. Almost all of them also said they were deeply emotionally affected by news of the war, and many said they still felt somewhat concerned about their personal safety, although the proportion reporting safety concerns dropped since a similar poll in the early days of the war. The survey released Thursday, which canvassed 1,901 Jews between Feb. 23 and March 11, foun ..read more

(JTA) — With just hours before Jews around the world will sit down for the first Passover seder since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, many are reckoning fully for the first time with how to discuss the trauma and pain of the last seven months at their tables. A diverse array of Jewish groups and leaders have produced materials designed to help with that reckoning. The traditional haggadah — of which there are many new ones this year — offers a durable framework for grappling with a world that includes both danger and resilience for the Jewish people; the new supplements aim to help Jews ..read more

(JTA) — An Orthodox rabbi at Columbia University has encouraged students to leave the campus until further notice, saying that he does not believe the university and city police can be counted on to keep Jewish students safe. “What we are witnessing in and around campus is terrible and tragic. The events of the last few days, especially last night, have made it clear that Columbia University’s Public Safety and the NYPD cannot guarantee Jewish students’ safety in the face of extreme antisemitism and anarchy,” Rabbi Elie Buechler wrote in a message to students in Yavneh, the Orthodox student co ..read more

(JTA) — Israeli officials are decrying reports that the United States plans to sanction an Israeli military unit for human rights abuses, a step the State Department has never before taken.  The report of sanctions comes amid escalating violence in the West Bank. Last week, an Israeli teenager was murdered in what authorities said was a terror attack, and deadly riots by settlers followed. In recent days, an Israeli military raid resulted in the deaths of 14 Palestinians and injuries to 10 Israeli soldiers.  On Sunday, the news site Axios reported that Secretary of State Antony Blink ..read more