WHAT’S DRIVING THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONVERSATION

Good morning from 30,000 feet, coming to you aboard a flight from Pittsburgh to Atlanta. I’ll be spending the next few days at Camp Ramah Darom’s Passover retreat. If you’re around, come say hi!

Today: Josh Shapiro arson suspect cites Palestinians as motive • Trump threatens Harvard’s tax-exempt status • Musk’s Jewish baby • and dog abducted in Hamas attack reunites with owner.

POLITICS

Judi Yuen of YIVO photographs a Yiddish article for digitization in February. (PJ Grisar)

Jews thought Trump wanted to fight antisemitism. Why did he cut all of their grants?

Elon Musk’s government cost-cutting measures hacked more than a thousand grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, including many for Holocaust history and Yiddish culture.

My colleague Mira Fox offers a closer look, speaking to those who received letters that their funds would be redistributed to work that was more aligned with President Donald Trump’s goals.

Translations of Ukrainian-Jewish poetry, Yiddish women writers and Soviet Holocaust literature were cut; a Jewish playwriting contest lost its $20,000 grant; libraries and museums such as YIVO lost the funding for digitization projects, as did an online archive of Klezmer music.

“The bigger funders in the Jewish world were looking toward Jewish summer camps and Holocaust education and, of course, Israel,” said Susan Bronson of the Yiddish Book Center, noting the importance of these government grants for “the cultural sphere,” which might otherwise go unfunded.

In search of an explanation for the cuts, Allison Schachter, who received a grant for a Yiddish translation project, said the decision-makers are “hostile to the idea of the NEH and to scholarly research and expertise,” Added YIVO’s Jonathan Brent: “This is worthy of the fools of Chelm.”

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters Tuesday that Trump wants to see Harvard apologize to Jewish students. (Getty)

At Harvard…

President Trump on Tuesday threatened to take away Harvard’s tax-exempt status, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Harvard needs to apologize for what she called “antisemitism that took place on their college campus against Jewish American students.” (Times of Israel)

Dr. Alan Garber, Harvard’s Jewish president, wraps tefillin daily and shares Torah lessons with students. “He is smart, capable, honestly determined to make Harvard better, and facing enormous challenges given the entrenched culture,” Rabbi David Wolpe told me. (Forward)

Before Harvard rejected Trump’s demands, it instituted numerous changes in an attempt to counteract accusations of antisemitism. (Forward)

On other campuses…

The government’s case against Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia protest leader who is being threatened with deportation, cites as evidence unverified claims from tabloid articles. (NBC News)

Organized by Jewish Voices for Peace, hundreds of protesters gathered Monday for a Passover Seder outside ICE headquarters in Manhattan, calling for Khalil’s release. (Religion News Service)

The Trump administration is moving to deport another Columbia student, Mohsen Mahdawi, citing concerns that his actions could “potentially undermine” efforts toward Middle East peace. (New York Times)

MIT said nine student visas were revoked without explanation. One of the students, who was set to graduate in May, is already suing the government. (Boston Globe, WBUR)

Vandals painted “death to Israel” and “intifada now” across several buildings at Northwestern University. (JTA)

Georgetown’s student government postponed a planned referendum on divesting from Israel originally set for Passover, after Jewish students protested that they would be out of town. (Jewish Insider)

Elsewhere in politics…

The man who allegedly started a fire in Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s residence on the first night of Passover reportedly told a 911 operator shortly after the attack that he would not be part of what Shapiro “wants to do to the Palestinian people.” (Forward)

Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy, sharply escalated his stance on Iran Tuesday, urging the country to “stop and eliminate” its nuclear enrichment and weapons program — a notable shift less than a day after he appeared open to Iran maintaining a limited nuclear capability. (Guardian)

CULTURE

Richard Kreitner’s Fear No Pharoah explores the tenuous whiteness of Jews, and the slavery that helped enable it. (Eva Deitchages)

Faith and freedom

The new book Fear No Pharaoh: American Jews, the Civil War, and the Fight to End Slaveryshatters myths that overstate both Jewish involvement in slavery and opposition to it, revealing the diversity of response to the United States’ original sin. Freedom, says author Richard Kreitner, entails responsibility. “That we were not freed from slavery in Egypt, and that we did not find a refuge in America, in order to be either complicit or quiet in the oppression and the dehumanization of others.” Go deeper ►

Nick Jonas is currently starring on Broadway as a Jewish character who sings about a “Shiksa goddess.” Rukhl Schaechter, our Yiddish editor, says the term, even when used with positive intent, comes with demeaning cultural baggage.

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

Billy the dog belongs to Rachel Dancyg, the ex-wife of Alex Dancyg, who was taken hostage by Hamas and killed in captivity. (X)

Israel…

🐶 An Israeli soldier found a dog in Gaza that was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz during the Oct. 7 attack. The Cavalier King Charles Spaniel named Billy is expected to be reunited with its family in Israel today. (Times of Israel)

🌴 Israelis can no longer enter the Maldives, a popular tourist destination filled with island resorts, after a Palestinian-solidarity ban went into effect. (JTA)

🗳️ American Jews are turning out in record numbers for an election that could shape how billions of dollars from Israeli taxpayers, Jewish federations and private philanthropy is allocated in Israel. (JTA)

And elsewhere…

🤦 German high school students visiting the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, which was liberated 80 years ago this week, made a neo-Nazi gesture and took photos in the crematorium ovens. (The Times)

🛩️ A Jewish family died Saturday when their private plane crashed en route to upstate New York for Passover. Among the victims was Karenna Groff, who represented Team USA at the 2019 European Maccabi Games. (JTA)

👶 Elon Musk urged Ashley St. Clair, a Jewish social media influencer with whom he shares a newborn child, to not have the baby circumcised. (Wall Street Journal)

Transitions ► Lisa Rahman is the new COO of Jewish Family Services in Boca Raton, Florida … Danny Leban is the new CEO of the Jewish Federation of the Desert in Rancho Mirage, California … David Siegel is the new CEO of J Los Angeles.

Shiva calls ► Martin Levy, Steven Spielberg’s longtime marketing guru and the only publicist to win an Oscar, died at 96 … Yaakov Kirschen, a cartoonist known for his Dry Bones comic that appeared in countless Jewish newspapers, died at 87.

VIDEO OF THE DAY

The Children of October 7 is a new documentary featuring Montana Tucker, a social media star and granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, interviewing young Israelis who witnessed the attacks. It debuts on Paramount+ on April 23.

Today’s newsletter made me:

🤓 Confident I understand issues impacting American Jews.

🔗 Connected to the Jewish world.

💡 Curious to learn about something I read.

😵‍💫 Confused about today’s Jewish news.

🤷🏽‍♀️ No different.

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