WHAT’S DRIVING THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONVERSATION

Today: Happy Purim • Happy Pi Day • Happy birthday, Einstein!

And: Trump demands changes to Columbia admission policies • Hamas to free U.S. citizen in next hostage release • A German rock star tries on a new persona: Leonard Bernstein.

MAHMOUD KHALIL

A March 11 demonstration at UCLA in protest of ICE’s detainment of Mahmoud Khalil. (Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Opinion | Trump wants campuses to fight antisemitism. Here’s how they should actually do it. If the administration is serious about prompting reform in how seriously schools take antisemitism, David Myers, a professor at UCLA, has some ideas for how to make effective change. Good solutions, he writes, will involve leaning into the complexity of the issues fueling hate on campus: “We must create programs where Israeli studies and Palestinian studies are explored in entwined fashion, to reflect the lived experience of people on the ground.” Read his essay ➤

‘Nobody can protect you,’ Columbia dean warns foreign students after Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest. “If you are not a U.S. citizen, if you publish anything that could be interpreted as pro-Palestinian, I think that it’s likely that you will lose your visa or your green card,” said Kelly McBride of the nonprofit journalism institute Poynter, in response to reports that Columbia University’s journalism school leadership has warned international students against publishing anything to do with Gaza, Ukraine or campus protests. That wariness will have a cost for journalism about the war and its ripple effects for American universities, she said: “We lose insights that American citizens might not be able to articulate.” Read the story ➤

A Jewish Voice for Peace protester arrested at Trump Tower on Thursday. (Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images)

98 people were arrested inside Manhattan’s Trump Tower at a Jewish Voice for Peace-organized protest of the arrest and detention of recent Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil, who was a leader in campus opposition to the war in Gaza. (Associated Press)

President Donald Trump’s administration sent Columbia a list of demands, including new scrutiny for the school’s Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department, that it said must be implemented before the government would consider restoring $400 million in funding it stripped from the university last week. Separately, Columbia announced that students involved in last year’s takeover of Hamilton Hall had received punishments including expulsion, suspension and the temporary revocation of degrees. (New York Times, Times of Israel)

Khalil joined seven current Columbia students in suing the university to block it from sharing student disciplinary records with a House of Representatives committee that requested them. (New York Times)

Khalil’s 28-year-old wife, who is eight months pregnant with their first child, said that only days before his arrest he had brought up the possibility that he might be arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “I didn’t take him seriously. Clearly I was naive,” she said. (NBC)

PURIM

Reading the megillah in Israel. (Menahem Kahana / AFP/Getty Images)

Do you have a hangover from your Purim festivities? Make it worse with a truly impossible quiz dreamed up by our own Louis Keene. (And don’t, under any circumstances, dare to ask a Forward editor how low their own scores were.)

Fail to get anything like a passing grade? Soothe yourself by learning some Purim history to help with next year’s test: The legacy of the Purim shpil, a Yiddish tradition of “retelling the story of the megillah — often with outrageously funny distortions — in rhyming verse (gramen) rather than staid prose.” Or return to the celebratory spirit by pondering the funniest moments in Jewish history — and, with them, the question “If you could invite any Jewish historical figures to a megillah reading, who would you invite and why?”

And if the holiday is leaving you in a more somber mood, seek clarity with three sharp opinion pieces on what Purim really means in 2025:

I’m a rabbi. Here’s why I boycotted the megillah reading for Purim this year

Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza demands a new reading of the Purim story’s final chapter

How to navigate the Court of Trump? Esther’s pragmatism vs. Vashti’s principles

CULTURE

Helen Schneider as Leonard Bernstein, conducting some Brahms. (Maria Baranova)

She was a teenage runaway, German rock star and Berlin leading lady — now she’s playing Leonard Bernstein. Who do you hire to play the larger-than-life Leonard Bernstein in your new play? A larger-than-life character of your own, like Helen Schneider, the American-born but Germany-based actor taking on the role in Peter Danish’s off-Broadway Last Call. “Bernstein was, for me, a god, and he was handsome, and he made classical music accessible,” Schneider told our PJ Grisar.

A ‘dreadfully Jewish’ new play tells the story of a Grindr hookup gone awry. Elsewhere off-Broadway, As Time Goes By “relies heavily on archetypes — and stereotypes of Jewish men — to deliver its thesis on gay male loneliness,” writes our editorial intern Samuel Eli Shepherd. Yes, “there are some deeper conversations about Jewish vulnerability sprinkled in,” he writes, “but simply being paranoid does not make a compelling or rounded Jewish character.”

Plus: Happy 146th birthday, Albert Einstein!

Plus plus, and other mathematical functions: Happy Pi Day! Celebrate it by pondering two questions. First, a Purim crossover: Are hamantaschen, tiny crusts cradling delicious fillings, technically pies? And second, a 1924 query sent to the Forward: Why don’t Jews eat pie?

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

Hostage Edan Alexander, a U.S. citizen, is set to be released by Hamas, alongside the remains of four hostages. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

In Israel…

Hamas said it will release U.S. citizen Edan Alexander and the remains of four yet-to-be-identified hostages in a new exchange. (Times of Israel)

The Trump administration removed Adam Boehler, the U.S. hostage envoy who made waves for holding direct talks with Hamas, from his role conducting hostage talks. (Times of Israel)

Human rights experts affiliated with the United Nations accused Israel of “disproportionate violence against women and children.” (Associated Press)

Officials from Sudan said they turned down American overtures about resettling Gaza’s populace in the country; U.S. and Israeli officials have reportedly also reached out to Somalia and the breakaway region Somaliland with proposals. (Times of Israel)

The president of France’s far-right National Rally announced plans to visit Israel; he will be the first leader of the party to make an official visit to the country. (New York Times)

Everywhere else…

After the political and linguistic shakeups of 2020, the spelling “antisemitism” — no hyphen, no capitals — became the norm. But Trump’s second administration is trying to make “anti-Semitism” great again. (JTA)

Disney has scaled back press and premiere plans for its live action adaptation of Snow White amid controversies over its stars’ outspokenness — in contrasting directions — on the Israel-Hamas war. Israeli actress Gal Gadot, who plays the evil queen, has faced blowback for her strong support of the Jewish state; meanwhile, Rachel Zegler, who plays Snow White, has posted vocally in support of Palestinians. (Variety)

Daniel Radcliffe will return to our screens in a new TV show starring Tracy Morgan, and produced by Tina Fey. (Hollywood Reporter)

Shiva call ➤ Sports writer and commentator John Feinstein died at 69, on the same day his final column was published.

What else we’re reading ➤

“Mahmoud Khalil’s constitutional rights and the power of ICE” (New Yorker)

“Why 70 percent of Israelis want Netanyahu to resign” (Atlantic)

“For NPR’s Anas Baba, covering the war in Gaza also means living it” (Washington Post)

VIDEO OF THE DAY

Excited by the idea of the Purim shpil? Begin your own Yiddishist approach to the holiday by learning how to ask for hamentaschen in the mamaloshen.

Today’s newsletter made me:

🤓 Confident I understand issues impacting American Jews.

💡Curious to learn about something I read.

🤷🏽‍♀️ No different.

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