Beverly Hills school board candidate under fire over messages mocking trustee's visit to Jewish holy site
Beverly Hills school board candidate Kim Lifschitz faced accusations of antisemitism this week after screenshots surfaced appearing to mock a trustee's visit to Jerusalem's Western Wall, while a separate controversy involving her husband's comments featured on a livestream by Twitch streamer Hasan Piker resurfaced.
The screenshots show messages labeled with Lifschitz's name responding to a Beverly Hills Standard article documenting Beverly Hills Unified School District Board of Education member Russell Stuart's New Year's Day visit to the Western Wall, one of Judaism's holiest sites.
One message attributed to Lifschitz appeared to ridicule his kippah, a traditional Jewish head covering. "Maybe he can bust out the kippah from his dress up trunk," the message said.
Another message attributed to Lifschitz appeared later in the conversation, continuing the joke about Stuart's religious head covering, saying, "He probably used it to store his complimentary in-flight nuts."
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Stuart, whose family is Jewish, condemned the messages in a statement to Fox News Digital, saying political disagreements do not justify ridiculing religious practices.
"I found them deeply offensive," he said. "My visit to the Western Wall was personal and meaningful to me. Seeing a kippah described as something from a 'dress up trunk' turns Jewish religious observance into a costume and a punchline."
"Anyone is welcome to challenge my votes, my positions or my work on the school board. Mocking my religious observance crosses a very different line," he continued.
Lifschitz pushed back against the allegations in a statement to Fox News Digital, acknowledging that the nearly year-old messages came from a private group chat while arguing that her criticism concerned what she described as Stuart's use of Jewish religious symbols to gain political support.
"I said nothing antisemitic at all. In fact, I criticized Russell Stuart for disrespecting Jewish culture and observance," she said. "He was treating a kippah like a costume used in a performance, and he afforded it the same amount of respect one would give a container for airplane snacks."
"I didn’t 'attack' Russell Stuart for wearing a kippah or visiting the Western Wall," Lifschitz continued. "I expressed disgust that he turned those things into internet content."
California GOP Jewish Engagement Chair and attorney Elizabeth Barcohana, who has publicly criticized Lifschitz's candidacy, also condemned the school board hopeful, accusing her of being "prejudiced, rude, and unserious about education or the well-being of children."
Lifschitz, who identified herself as Jewish, also pointed to her personal experiences with antisemitism when explaining why she questioned Stuart's intentions.
"As a Jewish woman who has experienced plenty of antisemitism in her lifetime and who has a son who cannot protect himself from it, it's hardly surprising that I assumed the worst about his intentions, given the evidence available to me," Lifschitz said.
A newly circulated screenshot shows a group-chat message labeled with Lifschitz's name appearing to ridicule BHUSD Board Vice President Sigalie Sabag for discussing Holocaust survivors. According to the Beverly Hills Standard, the remark concerned Sabag's discussion of survivors who had spoken with district students.
"Love that Sigalie is talking about holocaust survivors like she collected the most Pokémon," the message said.
Stuart characterized the comments concerning his religious observance as antisemitic and called on Lifschitz to address them directly.
"I consider the remarks attributed to her antisemitic because they ridicule Jewish religious observance and an identifiable symbol of Jewish faith. I cannot speak to what was in her heart, but I can speak to the words," Stuart said.
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The controversy comes as Lifschitz competes for one of two seats on the BHUSD Board of Education in the Nov. 3 election. During an October interview with the Beverly Press, she emphasized combating discrimination and modeling appropriate behavior for students.
"You have to be a role model," she said. "You have to model the conduct that we are expecting from our children."
The allegations follow previous scrutiny involving Lifschitz's husband, Daniel Lifschitz, who wrote on Instagram that a clip of him had been featured on far-left streamer Hasan Piker's livestream after publicly criticizing the district's antisemitism resolution, according to a screenshot posted by Barcohana on X.
"I just wanted to make some MAGA folks on the school board feel bad and now I'm on [Hasan Piker's] livestream..." Daniel Lifschitz said in an Instagram post.
During a September 2025 livestream, Piker replayed a Fox 11 Los Angeles report by Chelsea Edwards concerning the district's decision to reverse a proposal to display Israeli flags during Jewish American Heritage Month. The footage featured Daniel Lifschitz criticizing the original resolution.
Piker praised Lifschitz's comments and compared displaying Israeli flags to displaying Nazi flags during a hypothetical German-American heritage commemoration.
Kim Lifschitz previously disputed claims that her husband appeared as an invited guest on Piker's program, explaining that the streamer had independently replayed television footage featuring his public remarks.
She also defended the private nature of the group-chat conversation, accusing Stuart and his supporters of seeking out critical remarks and using them to portray her negatively.
"Adults are allowed to dislike each other and talk about it amongst themselves in private chats," she said. "Seeking out the opinions of those you know dislike you, and then painting them as monsters when you 'catch' them doing what you expected them to do, is the equivalent of putting a stick through the wheel of your own bicycle."
Barcohana criticized the district's previous leadership and teachers' union, arguing that Beverly Hills parents had pushed for greater accountability over school spending and education policy.
"Parents in Beverly Hills worked very hard to take control of their children’s education back from the teachers’ union and other special interests, who allowed taxpayer money to be squandered without proper oversight," Barcohana told Fox News Digital.
"Once that happened, incompetent and unpopular school principals, teachers, and the superintendent were fired and replaced; student test scores and academic achievement improved, budgets got under control and teacher pay increased to record highs, and enrollment increased," she said.