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What Jewish voters need to know about Ron DeSantis, the Florida Republican running for president
(JTA) – In late April, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis visited Jerusalem, voicing support for Israeli West Bank settlements, touting a law he had just signed giving families thousands of dollars per year in private school tuition vouchers and signing a bill that increased penalties for antisemitic harassment.
Two weeks later, his education department rejected two new textbooks on the Holocaust as part of a clampdown on what he has called “woke indoctrination.”
Those two developments may anchor the Jewish arguments for and against DeSantis as he stands on the cusp of announcing a campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.
Supporters paint him as a steadfast ally of Israel who speaks to the pocketbook concerns of Jewish families. In the years since he became Florida’s governor in 2019, the state has seen an influx of Orthodox Jews, drawn both by lax pandemic policies and the promise of discounted day school tuition.
But DeSantis’ opponents portray him as a cultural reactionary whose anti-“woke” politics are inhibiting education on the Holocaust and antisemitism — along with teaching about race, gender and sexuality. He has repeatedly condemned George Soros, the progressive megadonor who is an avatar of right-wing antisemitic conspiracy theories. Surveys show that his near-total restriction of abortion rights is unpopular with Jews nationally.
And hanging over the campaign is the candidacy of former President Donald Trump, who is running for a second term, is leading in the polls — and shares much in common with DeSantis even as he has attacked him.
While DeSantis’ allies have played up some of their differences (such as DeSantis’ youth and military service), when it comes to their respective records on issues of interest to Jewish voters, Trump and DeSantis are less distinct.
Each has sought to cultivate Jewish support by focusing on Israel and erasing church-state separations that, Orthodox Jewish leaders argue, inhibit religious freedoms. And both have attracted white nationalist supporters while leaning into the culture wars.
DeSantis is set to officially announce his campaign in a chat with Elon Musk, who was just condemned by a wide range of Jewish figures (and defended by a handful of others) for tweeting that Soros “hates humanity.”
Here’s what you need to know about DeSantis’s Jewish record:
He has been an outspoken booster of Israel.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at a Jerusalem Post conference at the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem on April 27, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
DeSantis, a Catholic, has a visceral affinity for Israel, and has framed his support for the country in religious terms.
“When I took office, I promised to make Florida the most pro-Israel state in the United States, and we have been able to deliver on that promise,” he said this week, addressing evangelical Christians at the National Religious Broadcasting Convention in Orlando, The Jerusalem Post reported.
He likes to tell audiences that on his first visit to Israel as a U.S. congressman, his wife Casey scooped up water from the Sea of Galilee into an empty bottle to save for baptisms. The couple had yet to have children.
The water came in handy for the baptisms of their first and second children, but after DeSantis was elected governor, staff at his residence cleared away the unremarkable bottle (which was still half full) after their second child was baptized in 2019. Not long afterward, DeSantis mentioned the minor fiasco in passing at a synagogue in Boca Raton, and before he knew it people were sending him bottles of water from Israel.
The gesture still moves him. “I was sent, all the way from Israel, this beautiful big glass jar filled with water from the Sea of Galilee that sat on my desk in the governor’s office in Tallahassee until our third child was born and baptized, and we used that water to do it,” DeSantis said last month when he visited Israel.
DeSantis made Israel a focus when he was congressman, taking a leading role in advocating for moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He was among a group of lawmakers who toured Jerusalem in March 2017 and was bold enough to pick out what he said would be the likeliest site.
In November of that year, as chairman of the House national security subcommittee, he convened a hearing on what he called the necessity of moving the embassy. The following month, Trump announced the move, and the site the Trump administration chose was the one DeSantis had identified.
In May 2019, just months after becoming governor, DeSantis convened his state cabinet in Jerusalem and gave a definition of antisemitism favored by the pro-Israel community the force of law. The same year, he banned government officials from using Airbnb after the vacation rental broker removed listings in West Bank settlements. DeSantis’ blacklisting of the company was seen was key to Airbnb reversing the decision.
He’s garnered allies — and enemies — among Florida’s Jews.
DeSantis has done much to cultivate support in Florida’s growing Orthodox community, which shares his enthusiasm for bringing faith into government.
In 2021, DeSantis came to a Chabad synagogue in Surfside to sign two bills, one affording state recognition to Hatzalah, the Jewish ambulance service, and the other tasking all Florida public schools with setting aside a daily moment of silence, long a key initiative of the Chabad movement.
In his first gubernatorial campaign in 2018, DeSantis campaigned on steering state money to religious day schools. This year he made good on the promise, signing a law that makes $7,800 in scholarship funds available annually to schoolchildren across the state, regardless of income, and to be used at their school of choice.
DeSantis also has plenty of Jewish enemies in a state where the majority of the Jewish community votes for Democrats.
In his first term, he had a contentious relationship with Nikki Fried, a Democrat who, as agriculture commissioner, was one of the four ministers in the Cabinet who had a vote. DeSantis maneuvered to freeze her out of the decision-making process.
Fried, who describes herself as a “good Jewish girl from Miami,” now chairs the state’s Democratic Party. She routinely calls DeSantis a fascist. In April, she was arrested at an abortion rights protest outside Tallahassee’s City Hall.
Under DeSantis, Florida has prohibited abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. That stance has set him up for clashes with other prominent Jews in the state as well. Last year, he suspended Andrew Warren, a Jewish state attorney, because Warren pledged not to prosecute individuals who seek or provide abortions after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
L’Dor Va-Dor, a synagogue in Boynton Beach, spearheaded the first lawsuit filed against Florida’s abortion ban in 2022, citing religious freedom arguments. Daniel Uhlfelder, a Jewish lawyer who drew attention when he dressed as the Grim Reaper to protest DeSantis’s reopening of the beaches during the pandemic, signed on as an attorney for the synagogue.
His “war on woke” has had implications on Holocaust education.
Recently, much of DeSantis’ tenure has been defined by what he calls the “war on woke,” a term originated by Black Americans to describe awareness of racial inequity but now more often functions as shorthand for conservative criticism of progressive values. DeSantis has enacted multiple pieces of legislation restricting what can be taught in schools and has also limited transgender rights, banning gender-affirming medical care for children.
While most of the books challenged under DeSantis’ education laws have focused on race and gender, the study of the Holocaust has been affected as well. In addition to the education department’s rejection of the Holocaust textbooks this month, Florida laws that make teachers liable for teaching inappropriate content to students have led multiple school districts to take Holocaust novels off the shelves, including a graphic novel adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary.
DeSantis calls claims that he’s chilling Holocaust education “fake narratives.” He and his defenders point to his requiring all Florida public schools to certify that they teach about the Holocaust.
Neo-Nazi and white supremacist activity has increased under his watch.
A recent report from the Anti-Defamation League described an upward trend of extremist and antisemitic activity in the Sunshine State, driven in part by emerging white supremacist groups — some of whom have gone to bat for DeSantis in the past.
DeSantis has been dogged by accusations that he caters to the far right. One of the most stinging exchanges in the 2018 election season came when Andrew Gillum, DeSantis’s Democratic opponent in the race, accused DeSantis of not being forceful enough in renouncing the white nationalists who expressed support for him in robocalls.
“First of all, he’s got neo-Nazis helping him out in this state,” Gillum said. “Now, I’m not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist, I’m simply saying the racists believe he’s a racist.” DeSantis flinched.
DeSantis eked out a victory a few weeks later, and was soundly reelected last year, but he remains sensitive on the issue. Last year, when neo-Nazis intimidated Orlando’s Jews with signs and shouts at an overpass, politicians in the state reflexively condemned them. A reporter asked DeSantis why he had not done so, and after calling the neo-Nazis “jackasses,” the governor said the question was a “smear” and added, “We’re not playing that game.” (Several months later, the leader of the antisemitic propaganda group Goyim Defense League moved from California to Florida, saying he thought the Sunshine State would be more hospitable to his efforts.)
DeSantis has also called liberal prosecutors “Soros-funded”. It’s not an unusual political gambit — the billionaire Jewish liberal donor does fund progressives running for prosecutor. But Soros has also been the focus of multiple conspiracy theories that antisemitism watchdogs say are antisemitic, casting the Holocaust survivor as a malign influence with excessive power.
Some Jewish donors are already supporting him.
DeSantis appeared last year at a conference in New York of Jewish conservatives, where he talked to a friendly audience about his war against the “woke” and was also conveniently in the room with some of the most generous Republican donors.
He is reportedly working some of those donors, who gave generously to his gubernatorial runs. He was a star last November at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual Las Vegas confab, and Axios reported that he met with Miriam Adelson, the widow of GOP kingmaker Sheldon Adelson, as well as other Jewish donors when he was in Jerusalem last month.
A number of them are hanging back, not wanting to alienate Trump while he remains influential in the party. (Adelson has said she does not want to weigh in on the primaries.)
Among the Jewish donors and fundraisers said to be in DeSantis’s camp: Jay Zeidman, a onetime Jewish White House liaison who is now a Houston based businessman; Gabriel Groisman, a lawyer who is the former mayor of Bal Harbor; and Fred Karlinsky, a leading insurance lawyer.
Last week, Jewish conservative political commentator Dave Rubin tweeted that DeSantis would bring “Freedom, sanity and competency” to the country. Groisman shared the tweet with the word “This.”
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The post What Jewish voters need to know about Ron DeSantis, the Florida Republican running for president appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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In Congress, a measure to tighten U.S.-Israel military ties sparks backlash on both sides of the aisle
Next year’s National Defense Authorization Act has made its way to the House floor, and has some Democrats and conservatives alike rallying against a provision that critics in Congress say would embroil the U.S. in unprecedented levels of military integration with Israel.
The measure, Section 224 of the House Armed Services Committee’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act, was advanced by Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., and ranking member Adam Smith, D-Wash., as part of the committee’s annual defense bill. If enacted, it would establish a framework for expanded U.S.-Israel defense cooperation. An official designated by the Pentagon would be responsible for coordinating collaboration with Israel on technologies ranging from missile defense and drones to artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and biotechnology. The provision also encourages joint research projects, shared manufacturing arrangements, military training exercises, and closer cooperation between American and Israeli defense companies.
While the proposal has generated controversy in its own right, it is also fueling a broader conversation about what the U.S.-Israel defense relationship should look like after 2028, when the current 10-year memorandum of understanding governing American military assistance to Israel expires.
The United States has provided military assistance to Israel since 1960, but since 1998, the bulk of that aid has been directed by a series of such memoranda negotiated between the two countries. Congress must still approve the funds annually, but lawmakers have historically funded the agreements as negotiated.
But in recent months, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made clear that he does not wish to renew the 2016 MOU to its full extent, stating that he hopes to “taper off” U.S. aid over the next decade and wishes to focus instead on a more collaborative defense relationship.
His comments come as public support for Israel has declined in the United States and military aid has come under increasing political scrutiny, with many Democrats and some Republicans calling to reduce or cut off assistance. An April Pew Research Center survey found that 60% of Americans hold an unfavorable view of Israel, up from 53% a year earlier. Negative views have risen among both Democrats and Republicans, particularly among younger generations. Today, 57% of Republicans and 84% of Democrats ages 18 to 49 have an unfavorable view according to the Pew survey.
Rachel Brandenburg, managing director and senior policy analyst at the Israel Policy Forum, said Israeli leaders are likely aware that future aid packages could face greater scrutiny from both Democrats and an increasingly isolationist wing of the Republican Party, a factor that helps explain the Israeli interest in reducing its reliance on U.S. aid. At the same time, she said, Israel’s increasingly sophisticated defense industry and strong economy have made it less reliant on American financing than in the past.
Against that backdrop, supporters of Section 224 argue that deeper cooperation could help lay the groundwork for a future relationship based on mutual benefits.
“The United States has more to gain by harnessing Israel’s defense tech ecosystem, their innovative capabilities,” Brandenburg said. “Their economy is strong, so there’s quite a bit that they could be buying with their own dollars.”
Michael O’Hanlon, the Chair in Defense and Strategy and director of research in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, told the Forward he believes the concerns that Section 224 would integrate the U.S.-Israel defense relationship to unprecedented levels are overblown. “My overall sense is that this would move the US-Israel relationship in the direction of AUKUS,” he said, referring to an existing trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
“In theory, it shouldn’t really be needed because collaboration is already close,” he explained. “In practice, this kind of provision might help cut through bureaucratic red tape and speed up collaborations. But on balance, I don’t expect huge change because the partnership is already very tight.”
Critics, however, see the proposal very differently.
Its opponents worry that if the U.S. and Israel move away from a military-aid relationship and toward a more collaborative partnership, large parts of the U.S.-Israel defense relationship will be harder to scrutinize or limit. Instead of debating aid packages, lawmakers could find themselves dealing with defense projects that are already built into Pentagon programs and contracts.
“It’s taking one program that’s become unpopular and turning it into another program that those who would disapprove of an intensified U.S.-Israeli defense relationship won’t really know about,” said Steven Simon, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute.
If combined with Israel’s stated desire to reduce its reliance on aid and other efforts to deepen defense cooperation, Simon says Section 224 could produce a relationship that is “much more integrated, immutable, and immune to political pressures than has ever existed.”
Similar concerns have been raised by lawmakers on the left.
Sen. Bernie Sanders announced Monday that he intends to “strongly oppose” the provision, arguing that “Netanyahu is lobbying for Section 224 in the national defense bill, a provision that quietly expands U.S.-Israel military cooperation and weapons development with almost zero oversight.”
Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, also opposes the provision and introduced an amendment to strike Section 224 during committee markup, stating, “The American people are tired of the arrogance and insolence of Prime Minister Netanyahu telling America what we should do.”
On the right, political figures and commentators have framed the measure as a threat to American sovereignty.
Former representative Marjorie Taylor Greene tied the provision to the recent reports of Israeli espionage against the U.S., stating on X, “The Pentagon raised threat of Israeli spying on the U.S. to the highest level and AIPAC is openly cheering Republicans for section 224 in the NDAA that merges our military with Israel’s military.” Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie — who this week held a hearing premised on the conspiracy theory that Israel intentionally killed U.S. soldiers on the USS Liberty during the Six Day War — pledged to offer a floor amendment to strike the section.
The debate has also been picked up by far-right commentators, including podcaster Alex Jones, who stated: “This is beyond treason. This is absolutely a foreign government merging with us. Israel is now the main threat to the existence of this country.”
Brandenburg pushed back on concerns that the proposal would weaken oversight. Rather than moving cooperation further from public view, the legislation calls for additional reporting to Congress and public disclosure of some forms of existing coordination between the two countries, Brandenburg noted.
“That’s new,” she said, “in the sense of adding the accountability and transparency to these elements of the relationship in ways that didn’t exist previously.”
She also asserts many critics have overstated the significance of Section 224, noting that many of the forms of cooperation described in the legislation — including collaboration on missile defense, cyber security and counter-drone technology — are already taking place.
“Those who want to counter the idea that Israel and the United States should be working together have exaggerated what this legislation is actually saying,” she said. “They are accusing it of things like integrating the U.S. and Israeli militaries, or subjugating the U.S. military to the Israeli military. None of that is actually called for in here.”
The post In Congress, a measure to tighten U.S.-Israel military ties sparks backlash on both sides of the aisle appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel names a street after renowned Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever
The Israeli city of Netanya has renamed one of its streets Rechov Avrom Sutzkever (Abraham Sutzkever Street), after the renowned Yiddish poet and Vilna partisan.
The event on June 10 marked an important cultural moment, recognizing the legacy of a poet who devoted his life to Yiddish language and Jewish culture. During his lifetime, Sutzkever was celebrated not only for his poetry, but also for editing the storied Yiddish literary magazine Di goldene keyt (The Golden Chain) for 46 years. His work remains a fixture in the field of Yiddish literature today.
Sutzkever was born in 1913 in the shtetl of Smorgon, in what is now Belarus. During World War I, his family moved to Siberia, where his father, Hertz Sutzkever, died. In 1921, his mother Rayne moved the family to Vilnius, where Sutzkever attended cheder.
Sutzkever survived the Vilna Ghetto. He was a leader of the “Paper Brigade” that rescued Jewish cultural treasures from the Nazis and later became the only Jewish witness called by the Soviets to testify at the Nuremberg Trials.
His poetry chronicled his childhood in Siberia, his life in the Vilna ghetto and his escape to join the Jewish partisans. In 1947 he settled in Palestine, later Israel.
In Israel, he continued to create, publish and preserve Yiddish culture for decades. Yet, despite his immense influence around the world, he remained less known in Israel because he chose to write and fight for the Yiddish language rather than switch to Hebrew.
This is the first time a street in Israel has been named after him. Even Tel Aviv never did so, despite the fact that Sutzkever lived there for many years and the city was once a hotbed of Yiddish cultural activity, due to the influx of Yiddish-speaking immigrants who settled there after the Holocaust.
The street-naming ceremony was attended by the Mayor of Netanya, Avi Slama; representatives of the Lithuanian Embassy; public figures, artists, and members of the family, including Sutzkever’s granddaughter, Hadas Kalderon.
In the past decade, Kalderon has been instrumental in keeping Abraham Sutzkever’s memory alive, most notably through two documentary films: Ver Vet Blaybn? (Who Will Remain?) in 2021, and Black Honey: The Life and Poetry of Avraham Sutzkever in 2018.
Kalderon told me that she was very moved by Netanya’s decision to name the street after her grandfather, in a garden overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. “It was not only a tribute to Sutzkever himself, but also a powerful moment of recognition for Yiddish language and culture within the State of Israel,” she said.
The post Israel names a street after renowned Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever appeared first on The Forward.
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At the dawn of the World Cup, the story of the Jews who helped bring soccer to America
When the North American FIFA World Cup starts in Mexico City on June 11, the story will largely be told through the familiar lenses of Lionel Messi, the geography of the 48 participants and three hosts, and — because 75% of the games will be played there — the continuing rise of soccer in the United States. But there is another, less familiar story woven through the tournament: the long, strange and often overlooked history of Jews in North American soccer.
Mostly that’s been in the United States where players and owners have included a larger proportion of Jews than in Canada and Mexico. By my count, no Jewish players have represented Mexico, and only two Jewish men have represented Canada at senior international level and one of them, Tomer Chencinski, only did so once, in a friendly game where Canada lost 2-0 to Belarus in Doha. (Daniel Haber played 5 international games in his career).
For whatever reason, whether more closely linked to Europe, denied entry to other sports, or just arbiters of excellent taste, Jewish Americans have been at the forefront of soccer in the United States for over a century. The first American to play for a major European team was Eddy Hamel for Ajax Amsterdam in 1922. Hamel was a New York-born winger who became a star for Ajax in Amsterdam during the 1920s. An injury forced his retirement in the 1930s and, after the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, he was deported and murdered at Auschwitz in 1943. His story remains one of the most tragic intersections of Jewish history and world football.
Jews also comprised the largest soccer crowd in America when 46,000 New Yorkers watched Hakoach Vienna play New York All Stars in 1926. That record stood for over 50 years but it also encouraged a number of members of the Hakoach team to emigrate to the US and start a New York team that was a crucial part of the American Soccer League of the era.
Later, in the 1970s, the National American Soccer League — the glitzy NASL — became a success thanks to the glamorous New York Cosmos. As head of Warner Communications, their CEO Steve Ross, born Rechnitz, was the person who brought Pele over and made the league the star-studded affair it became. After Herman Sarkowsky co-founded the Seattle Sounders, the continent was almost ready for football.
When the NASL faded and folded, soccer dwindled as a major sport in the United States. Alan Rothenberg saw an opportunity to revive the sport by hosting the 1994 World Cup and founding the MLS as a reset. As president of the U.S. Soccer Federation and the chief executive of the World Cup USA 1994 organizing committee, he made both of those happen and laid the foundations for the current shape of U.S. soccer.
The success of the MLS was not a foregone conclusion, though; indeed, it barely survived to the millennium. It was founded in 1993 but only started playing in 1996 — losing an estimated $350 million between its founding and 2004. The league initially turned to Don Garber, a former NFL executive, in August 1999 but even he couldn’t turn it around. By late 2001, it looked like the league would fold like its predecessors but it was able to secure new financing from owners Lamar Hunt, Philip Anschutz, and the Kraft family to take on more teams. Over the past 20 years, it has become robust, enjoying the general boom of all things soccer, riding the coattails of the English Premier League.
Without Robert Kraft and Anschutz, Major League Soccer might not exist today. During the league’s precarious early years, the two billionaire owners absorbed enormous losses to keep the fledgling competition alive. Kraft, the owner of the NFL’s New England Patriots, was also a central figure in bringing the 2026 World Cup to North America. As chairman of the United Bid Committee, he played a crucial role in securing the tournament for the United States, Canada and Mexico.
If Kraft represents one side of the Jewish soccer story, Chuck Blazer represents another.
The larger-than-life American soccer executive helped expose corruption inside FIFA, serving as a key witness in the investigations that ultimately toppled some of the most powerful figures in world football. Yet Blazer was a product of the very system he later helped unravel. His spectacular rise and fall remains one of the strangest chapters in soccer history, a tale of luxury apartments, exotic pets and global corruption.
Unlike baseball, basketball or boxing, soccer never became known as a major arena of Jewish achievement in the United States. Perhaps that has been due to the historic lack of status for soccer in the country. Despite the excellence of Yael Averbuch West for the USWNT and a number of Jewish players for the USMNT including Jonathan Bornstein, Benny Feilhaber, Dan Calichman, DeAndre Yedlin, Kyle Beckerman and the maverick Yari Alnutt there have been no soccer equivalents of Sandy Koufax or Hank Greenberg.
The stalwart defender Jeff “Goose” Agoos came closest with 134 international appearances and six more for the U.S. soccer Olympic team. But playing with a mediocre USMNT, he enjoyed few legendary moments. In fact, arguably no professional moments outshone the bizarre story of his 1989 NCAA championship ring in his junior year, the season that he played in the Maccabiah. On Dec. 3 of that year, his Virginia Cavalier team (playing for future USMNT coach Bruce Arena) met the top ranked, undefeated Santa Clara team in a freezing cold stadium in Piscataway, N.J. The teams were still tied 1-1 after FOUR overtimes and, with no penalties on the books, they shared the spoils. It was the third time that two teams shared the championship and has never happened again.
This year’s USMNT squad does include the only Jewish player at this summer’s tournament — reserve goalkeeper Matt Turner. If, as coach Mauricio Pochettino plans, Turner exclusively warms the bench, he will take his place alongside many of America’s notable Jewish soccer figures who have furthered the game, even if not on the field.
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