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<\/a><\/p>\nProtesters hold up \u201cFree Palestine\u201d signs outside a May 1, 2025, Boulder City Council meeting. (Cliff Grassmick for MediaNews Group & Boulder Daily Camera\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The new rules, approved by all council members except Adams, included an earlier meeting start time, a shorter open comment window and an audio-only broadcast. Brockett said that just a few meetings after enacting these measures, the chaos calmed down.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople get the same amount of time to speak as they did before,\u201d he said, referring to a two-minute limit allocated to each speaker. \u201cThey still are allowed to say whatever they would like, within the limits of the First Amendment.\u201d <\/p>\n
Adams, on the other hand, expressed concern about the impact of an earlier start time on working families, as well as the lack of video during virtual testimony. Instead, she said she would have preferred the \u201cconsistent implementations\u201d of existing rules. <\/p>\n
A few days after the council passed the rules, Adams reportedly published multiple Instagram stories that two colleagues, Matt Benjamin and Mark Wallach, characterized as \u201coffensive and antisemitic social media posts.\u201d Because these posts were \u201cstories,\u201d they ordinarily would have disappeared after 24 hours unless saved as highlights, but Facebook users posted links to screenshots and recordings in the comments of Benjamin and Wallach\u2019s statement. <\/p>\n
One such story declared that \u201cthe biggest genocide in human history didn\u2019t occur in Nazi Germany, but on American soil,\u201d set to music from Schindler\u2019s List. She was referring to tribal nations, stressing that \u201cunlike Jewish people who received repatriation,\u201d they \u201clost generations.\u201d Another story accused Boulder of funding genocide.<\/p>\n
Benjamin and Wallach said that her stories \u201ccrossed a serious line into antisemitism,\u201d adding that \u201clanguage in these posts reflects a more insidious, modern form of antisemitism, one that avoids explicit slurs but relies instead on double standards, dog whistles and coded messages.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adams responded to her colleagues by accusing them of releasing \u201cmisinformation\u201d in what she described as \u201can attempt to distract from the real work and conversations our council has ahead of us.\u201d She stressed that \u201cinjustice to any individual or group of people is wrong and must be followed by repair and restitution.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the shoe was on the other foot and I thought they were being antisemitic, I would have put proper paperwork together and launched an investigation,\u201d Adams told JTA, criticizing their reliance on \u201cthe court of public opinion.\u201d <\/p>\n
Reflecting on this dispute, Greene, the rabbi from Har Hashem, said it\u2019s not \u201cparticularly useful to declare whether someone is or isn\u2019t antisemitic.\u201d He noted, however, that some of the \u201cposts have traded in antisemitic tropes: drawing false equivalencies with the Holocaust, implying that Jewish people have received undue reparations and framing Jewish concerns as obstacles to collective liberation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether intentional or not, those tropes cause real harm,\u201d Greene said. \u201cWhen someone in a position of public trust continues to deploy them after being told \u2013 repeatedly and directly \u2013 how hurtful they are, that matters.\u201d<\/p>\n
A few weeks following the social media showdown, police arrested anti-Israel activist Laura Gonzalez for shouting profanities at a Jewish resident and confronting Benjamin. She was charged with felony retaliation against an elected official, as well as verbal and physical harassment misdemeanors. While the first two charges were dropped in May, Gonzalez is expected to face trial for the physical harassment misdemeanor, to which she has pleaded non guilty. <\/p>\n
Asked for her opinion on the Gonzalez case, Adams acknowledged a spike in aggressive incidents, but she focused on the increase in such behaviors against participants at pro-Palestine events, where she said someone was recently pushed. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s important that we investigate any situation where there\u2019s allegations of physical harm,\u201d Adams added. \u201cThose investigations should be equal in strength and integrity.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018A very toxic environment for Jewish people\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\nThe disagreements on Israel reflect a broader dispute over just how much the city council should be involving itself in foreign affairs. <\/p>\n
Already in February 2024, Adams told fellow council members that the city has \u201cskin in the game,\u201d urging them to consider the ceasefire resolution. Citing the footprint of global technology, medical and defense firms in Boulder, she warned against behaving \u201clike we do not have implications internationally.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adams criticized those who support \u201cthe actions of an ethno-state,\u201d explaining that during a May 2025 trip to the West Bank \u2013 as part of the Boulder-Nablus Sister City Project \u2013 she \u201csaw firsthand different roads for different people.\u201d That trip, she said, resulted in a creative project called Uprooting Qahr, an Arabic word she defined as \u201canger that\u2019s caused by oppression and displacement and dispossession.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked if she also visited Israel, she said that she \u201clanded in Israel, in Tel Aviv.\u201d She said that she had intended to spend more time in Israel after her West Bank tour, but that her plans changed after the Yemen-based Houthis fired a ballistic missile at Ben Gurion Airport. After speaking with a few Israeli Jews in the West Bank, she credited them for \u201csome solidarity and understanding that we are one human species on one planet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brockett said that he, too, has visited Nablus as part of the Sister Cities project, but that on his trip, he also visited Boulder\u2019s Israeli sister city, Ramat HaNegev. He has long argued the council should focus on local issues rather than take up a ceasefire resolution or devote formal meeting time to foreign policy matters. <\/p>\n
Rabbi Fred Greene of Congregation Har HaShem hugs Rev. Mary Kate R\u00e9jouis of St. Peter\u2019s Episcopal Church at the Boulder county courthouse on June 3, 2025, two days after the Pearl Street attack. (Hyoung Chang for The Denver Post\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
\u201cCity councils exist to serve their residents \u2014 housing, transportation, public safety, local services,\u201d Greene, of Har Hashem, told JTA. \u201cThose are the responsibilities Boulder voters entrust their council with.\u201d<\/p>\n
Greene acknowledged \u201cthat elected officials are human beings with moral convictions\u201d who might make value statements. But he noted that the war has \u201cconsumed meeting after meeting, month after month, at the expense of local needs.\u201d That fixation, he added, became \u201ca vehicle for rhetoric that made Jewish residents feel targeted and unsafe.\u201d <\/p>\n
Soloway, from Bonai Shalom, likewise described \u201ca very toxic environment for Jewish people,\u201d recognizing that this feeling is \u201cnot coming directly from City Council.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cBut I would say that some of the rhetoric and the posts of Taishya Adams [have] definitely fostered that,\u201d Soloway said.<\/p>\n
\u2018Jewish identity, love for Israel, grief over Gaza\u2019<\/p>\n
Discussing the \u201ccompromises made for the establishment of nation states\u201d \u2013 including the U.S. and Israel \u2013 Adams emphasized that she isn\u2019t asking anything of others that she isn\u2019t willing to do herself, explaining that she has been working on right-of-return policies for Indigenous people whose land was stolen in Boulder. <\/p>\n
\u201cI know what segregation looks like as a descendant of enslaved Africans,\u201d she said. \u201cI understand what apartheid looks like.\u201d<\/p>\n
Soloway expressed concern about such comparisons. He said that Adams \u201cpresents herself as a real student of history\u201d but then equates the U.S. to Israel, whose \u201chistory is so utterly different.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe original colonizers of America were not indigenous in any way, and no one would ever claim they are,\u201d he added. \u201cBut Jews have been indigenous to the Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adams discussed her recent attempts to engage with Boulder\u2019s Jewish community, noting that over the past year, she \u201cmade a stronger effort to reach out directly and really left the ball in their court.\u201d She said she met with some local rabbis one-on-one and also made connections through the Denver\/Boulder Jewish Voice for Peace. <\/p>\n
The JVP chapter did not respond to a request from JTA for comment. <\/p>\n
As for her opponent, Brockett said that if he wins another term, he would \u201coffer full support\u201d to Jewish residents and \u201cspeak out if anything antisemitic occurs.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t have the ability to prevent some speech like that from occurring, but we can show that it\u2019s unacceptable and that the leadership of the city stands in solidarity with the Jewish community in Boulder,\u201d Brockett said. <\/p>\n
Addressing the current morale, Greene said that his congregants \u201cfeel less safe, more on edge, more vulnerable.\u201d For example, he observed that those who have devoted their lives to \u201ctikkun olam\u201d \u2013 repairing the world \u2013 now \u201cfind themselves cast as complicit in something they abhor.\u201d <\/p>\n
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