Last month, a seemingly minor event took place that signifies sea-changes in American Jewry: a Jewish school in the New York City neighborhood of Kew Gardens Hills changed its name from “Schechter Queens” to “Queens Hebrew Academy.” The school was the first to take its name from Solomon Schechter, a distinguished scholar and a founder of Conservative Judaism in America, after whom numerous schools associated with that movement were named. But with changing demographics, the student body at Schechter Queens has been increasingly inclined toward Orthodoxy.

Gil Troy, who graduated from this school decades ago, during the high point of Conservative Judaism in America, reflects on this event, continuing observations he and his brother Tevi made on the Mosaic podcast in 2021:

Solomon Schechter’s transformation after 68 years tells an ideological tale, too. It’s a story of the rise—and now fall—of a school, and school network, that embodied the peoplehood-centered, deeply Zionist, patriotic and achievement-oriented Judaism that made American Jewry great. Schechter offered an extraordinary education, raising proud Jews, proud Americans, proud Zionists—and proud Queens kids, too.

Today, Conservative Judaism, which thrived in a middle-class-oriented, temperamentally moderate America, faces severe ideological, demographic and institutional challenges beyond the scope of what I can say here.

But as Solomon Schechter of Queens transitions into Queens Hebrew Academy, let us hail the American-Jewish literacy it conveyed. . . . We were born into a world far better than the East European hell our grandparents fled. We knew that, by rolling up our sleeves rather than throwing up our hands, we would make a better world for our children too. And we were grateful to Solomon Schechter School of Queens which we trusted to help us—and them—forge ahead.

Addressing a recent meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Committee, Mahmoud Abbas criticized Hamas more sharply than he has previously (at least in public), calling them “sons of dogs.” The eighty-nine-year-old Palestinian Authority president urged the terrorist group to “stop the war of extermination in Gaza” and “hand over the American hostages.” The editors of the New York Sun comment:

Mr. Abbas has long been at odds with Hamas, which violently ousted his Fatah party from Gaza in 2007. The tone of today’s outburst, though, is new. Comparing rivals to canines, which Arabs consider dirty, is startling. Its motivation, though, was unrelated to the plight of the 59 remaining hostages, including 23 living ones. Instead, it was an attempt to use an opportune moment for reviving Abbas’s receding clout.

[W]hile Hamas’s popularity among Palestinians soared after its orgy of killing on October 7, 2023, it is now sinking. The terrorists are hoarding Gaza aid caches that Israel declines to replenish. As the war drags on, anti-Hamas protests rage across the Strip. Polls show that Hamas’s previously elevated support among West Bank Arabs is also down. Striking the iron while it’s hot, Abbas apparently longs to retake center stage. Can he?

Diminishing support for Hamas is yet to match the contempt Arabs feel toward Abbas himself. Hamas considers him irrelevant for what it calls “the resistance.”

[Meanwhile], Abbas is yet to condemn Hamas’s October 7 massacre. His recent announcement of ending alms for terror is a ruse.

Abbas, it’s worth noting, hasn’t saved all his epithets for Hamas. He also twice said of the Americans, “may their fathers be cursed.” Of course, after a long career of anti-Semitic incitement, Abbas can’t be expected to have a moral awakening. Nor is there much incentive for him to fake one. But, like the protests in Gaza, Abbas’s recent diatribe is a sign that Hamas is perceived as weak and that its stock is sinking.