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Bosnian Jews mourn Moris Albahari, one of Sarajevo’s last Ladino speakers
(JTA) — Moris Albahari, a Holocaust survivor, former partisan fighter and one of the last Ladino speakers in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s dwindling Jewish community, passed away at the age of 93 last month.
It is believed that he was one of four native Ladino speakers remaining in a country where the Judeo-Spanish language once flourished and was spoken by luminaries like Flory Jagoda, the grande dame of Ladino song, and Laura Bohoretta, the founder of a uniquely Sephardic feminist movement in Bosnia.
Bosnia’s small Jewish community — with barely 900 members throughout the country, 500 of whom live in Sarajevo — are mourning the loss of a living link to communal memory as well as a dear friend.
“From you, uncle Moco, I learned a lot about Judaism, about life, about nature and especially about people. About both the good and the evil,” Igor Kožemjakin, the cantor of the Sarajevo Jewish community, wrote in a memorial post on Facebook, referring to Moris as “Čika,” or uncle, a term of endearment in Bosnian.
“It is a terrible loss, especially for Sarajevo. Our community is very small, especially after the Holocaust,” Eliezer Papo, a Sarajevo-born Jew and scholar of Ladino language and literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “We’re not speaking just in terms of prominent members of the community, we’re speaking in terms of family members. Everyone is like a family member.”
When Albahari was growing up in the 1930s, the Jewish community of his native Sarajevo numbered over 12,000. Jews made up more than a fifth of the city and it was one of the most important centers of Jewish life in the western Balkans.
In his youth, the city was part of what was then the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Formed out of the borderlands between the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, it was a multiethnic state composed of Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks, Slovenians, Macedonians, Hungarians, Albanians and more. Among them were many Jewish communities both Ashkenazi and Sephardic.
The unique mix of of Muslim, Jewish, Catholic and Orthodox Christian communities, with their mosques, synagogues and churches defining Sarajevo’s skyline, earned the city the nickname “Little Jerusalem.”
Speaking in a 2015 documentary made by American researchers, “Saved by Language,” Albahari explained that his family traced their roots back to Cordoba before the Spanish Inquisition, and through Venice, before settling in what would become Bosnia when it was part of the Ottoman Empire.
“We didn’t want to ‘just’ write an article about Moris or Sarajevo; we wanted [the audience] to see what we saw and hear what we heard,” Brian Kirschen, professor of Ladino at Binghamton University, who worked on the documentary with author Susanna Zaraysky, told JTA. “This resulted in a grassroots initiative to create the documentary.”
In the film, Albahari takes the researchers and their viewers on a tour through what was Jewish Sarajevo, giving glimpses of the thriving Ladino speaking community in which he was raised and explaining how ithe language would save him many times, when the Nazis and their Croat allies, the Ustaša, came to shatter it.
“In sharing your story of survival during the Holocaust, you opened doors that remained closed for decades,” Kirschen said in a memorial post on Facebook. “Some of your stories were even new to members of your family, but each survivor has their own timeline. While you experienced great pain during your life, from your story, we also learn about moments of kindness and heroism. Through your story, you also taught us about the power of language.”
Albahari wasn’t yet a teenager when, in 1941, Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy invaded Yugoslavia. The Nazis occupied the eastern portion of the country, including what is now Serbia, while they raised up a Croat fascist party, known as the Ustaša, to administer the newly formed “Independent State of Croatia” — often known by its Serbo-Croatian initials, NDH — in the western regions that included the modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Ustaša collaborated in the Nazis’ genocidal plans for Europe’s Jewish and Roma comunities, and they had genocidal designs of their own for the Orthodox Serb communities living in the NDH.
To that end they established the Jasenovac concentration camp, which would become known as the Auschwitz of the Balkans. By the war’s end it had become the third largest concentration camp in Europe, and behind its walls the overwhelming majority of Sarajevo’s Jews — at least 10,000 — were massacred. Including Serbs, Jews, Roma and political dissidents of Croat or Muslim Bosniak background, as many as 100,000 people were killed in Jasenovac.
Albahari was 11 years old when the Ustaša came to deport him and his large family to Jasenovac. A former teacher working as an Ustaša guard in the town of Drvar, where the train stopped, warned Albahari’s father, David, about their destination, and he was able to help his son escape from the train.
The teacher helped guide the young Moris to an Italian soldier named Lino Marchione who was secretly helping Jews.
This was the first case when Albahari’s Ladino came in handy. Ladino is largely based on medieval Spanish, with a mixture of Hebrew, Aramaic, Turkish and other languages mixed in. For speakers of Serbo-Croatian, a Slavic language, it’s entirely incomprehensible. But for a speaker of another Romance language such as Italian, it’s not such a stretch to understand, and Moris was able to converse with his Italian savior.
With his family gone, he was taken in by a Serb family, and changed his name to Milan Adamovic to hide his Jewish identity. Still, by 1942, it became clear that neither as Adamovic nor Albahari would he be safe in the town. So he fled to the mountains.
“If there was [a battle] I took clothes from a dead soldier to wear, I lived like a wolf in the mountains, you know. Visiting villages [asking for something] to give me for eating, it was a terrible time,” Albahari recalled in “Saved By Language.”
He would only feel safe in villages under the control of partisan forces. Yugoslavia was the only country in Europe to be liberated from Nazi rule by its own grassroots resistance.
During his time in the mountains, Albahari joined up with a partisan unit aligned with the movement of Josip Broz Tito, who would lead Communist Yugoslavia after the war. By the war’s end, Tito’s partisans numbered over 80,000 and included more than 6,000 Jews, many in prominent positions, such as Moša Pijade, who would go on to serve as vice president of the Yugoslav parliament after the war.
Moris was out on patrol as a partisan when he came upon a group of American and British paratroopers. They raised their weapons at him, thinking he was an enemy. Moris tried to communicate, but he spoke no English.
When he asked the soldiers if they spoke German or Italian, they shook their heads. When he asked about Spanish, one perked up: a Hispanic-American soldier by the name of David Garijo.
In Ladino, Alabahari was able to explain that he was not an enemy but could lead them to a nearby partisan camp where they would be safe.
“Ladino saved my life in the war,” Albahari recalled in the documentary.
At the partisan camp, Morris received even bigger news: The family that he had assumed had all perished after he left the train were in fact alive. The former school teacher and Ustaša guard who had warned his father had met them at the next train junction to help them escape. Furthermore, around half of the Jews in the train car were able to escape using the same hole Moris used during his initial escape.
Ultimately the family all survived the war, unlike so many other Jews of Sarajevo.
“Where is Samuel, where is Dudo, where is Gedala? They never came back,” Albahari lamented, listing missing neighbors while walking through Sarajevo’s old Jewish neighborhood in the documentary. “Maybe we are happy because we are alive after the Second World War, but also unlikely because every day we must cry for these dead people.”
When Moris returned to Sarajevo, it was an entirely different place from the bustling Jewish community he had once known.
Gone was the sound of Ladino in the streets and alleyways of Bascarsija, the market district where so many of Sarajevo’s Jews had once lived. Gone were the synagogues — only one of the many synagogues that had existed before WWII still functions. Gone was the robust Jewish life that was once a central part of Sarajevo.
Moris was still only 14 by the war’s end, so he returned to school and ultimately graduated at the top of his class. He became a pilot and later director of the Sarajevo Airport.
In this new world, Ladino was spoken, if at all, only in the home.
“Always, when I hear Spanish, I hear my father and mother, and all the synagogues, prayers in Ladino and rabbis who spoke Ladino. But that is in the past,” Albahari says in “Saved by Language.”
Eliezer Papo, who is a generation younger than Albahari, recalled that in his youth Ladino had long been reduced to a language of secrets.
“Mostly, Ladino was used when the elders didn’t want youngsters to understand,” Papo said.
Only later, in the 1980s, did community members realize what was being lost and begin to gather to maintain their language, recount what Jewish Sarajevo had been like and share their wartime stories of survival.
“He never took his story to the places of revenge, but he took it and his life experience to a place of ‘Never again,’ not just ‘Never again for Jews’, but never again for anybody,” said Papo.
Like many Sarajevans, World War II would not be the last major conflict Albahari would see. Less than 40 years later, war would once again come to Sarajevo with the break-up of Yugoslavia.
From 1992-1995 the city remained under constant siege by Bosnian Serb forces looking to break away from what would become Bosnia and Herzegovina. Moris joined with other Jews of Sarajevo in working to provide aid to their fellow Sarajevans during the harsh period.
Sarajevo’s synagogue was turned into a shelter and a soup kitchen. The community ran a network of underground pharmacies and a message service allowing Sarajevans to get word to family and friends outside of the city during what became the longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare.
“Moris was an inspirational persona to many members of Jewish community and La Benevolencija,” Vlado Anderle, the current president of that local Jewish humanitarian organization told JTA. “He was a man with such inviting spirit and energy.”
When the dust settled on the breakup of Yugoslavia, and the new Bosnian state rose from its ashes, Moris found himself once again in a new role.
During the communist era in Yugoslavia, religious activity was discouraged. Sarajevo’s Jews emphasized the ethnic character of Jewish culture rather than the religious one. In the new Bosnia and Herzegovina, that was no longer true. So the community worked to reconnect with their religious identity as well.
“Everybody looked up to the people who had Jewish upbringing before the Second World War,” Papo recalled. “This doesn’t mean that they were rabbis. Just that they knew it better than anyone else.”
Moris, whose formal Jewish education ended in his preteen years, was appointed president of the community’s religious committee.
As such it often fell on him to represent Judaism to the Bosnian society at large, often in a very creative way, according to Papo, who in addition to being a scholar of Ladino is ordained as a rabbi and serves the Sarajevo community as a rabbi-at-large from Israel.
In one case, while being interviewed on a major Bosnian television station, Moris was asked why Jews cover their head with a kippah or other hat during prayer. Moris’ response, or rather creative interpretation, as Papo called it, was made up on the spot.
Moris’ interpretation began with the ancient temple in Jerusalem where Jews once had to fully immerse in a ritual bath before entering.
“Since the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed it was reduced to washing the uncovered parts of the body only, before entering a synagogue, similarly to Muslims: the feet, the head, the hands…” Papo recalled him saying. But in Europe, as Moris’ answer went, they began to cover more and more of their body. “In Europe they started wearing shoes, so the feet were not uncovered anymore, and then they started wearing a hat, not to have to wash their head… you know it’s Europe, one could catch a cold if going out with wet hair…”
“A few months later, I came to Sarajevo, and found that everyone has heard this explanation and is talking about it, not just people in the community, but in the street,” Papo said. “And you know, I let it pass, I couldn’t correct them, it was just so beautiful. That was his genius.”
“Identity is all about telling stories. And Moris was one of the great storytellers of the community,” Papo added. And through his stories he expressed an identity which was “made of the same contradictions that Sephardic Judaism is made of, that Sarajevo is made of, that Bosnia and Herzegovina is made and that Yugoslavia was and is made of and that the Balkans are made of.”
Albahari is survived by his wife and a son.
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The San Diego imam defended Oct. 7. His mosque still deserves our help
Jewish leaders and institutions like the ADL correctly expressed sympathy and support after Monday’s fatal shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego.
That really upset some people.
“Just remember the people who attend this mosque want us all to be killed,” Laura Loomer posted to X.
Loomer is an extremist, and it would be easy to dismiss her words as the fringe. But she does advise the president of the United States, and hundreds of social media posts echoed her opinion.
Many of them pointed out that 13 days after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, Islamic Center Imam Taha Hassane gave a talk in which he told his congregation, “When people are occupied, then the resistance is justified — it becomes a human right.”
“We cannot accuse someone who is fighting for his life to be a terrorist,” he added. “The terrorist is the one who started the occupation, not the one who is defending himself.”
In the same sermon, Hassane said that American minds were poisoned by media influenced by “Zionist sources” to hate Islam, and that “the Zionist propaganda machine” bore some responsibility for the 2023 murder of an 8-year-old Muslim boy in Chicago at the hands of a mentally unstable, Islamophobic, non-Jewish man.
Some of them also noted that two months later, Hassane’s wife, Lallia Allali, was asked to resign from the community advisory board of The San Diego Union-Tribune and resigned from a teaching position at the University of San Diego after it came to light that she had posted an image on her Facebook account of a Star of David decapitating five babies, with the caption, “The devil is killing.”
All of this is bad. None of it justifies or excuses yesterday’s violence.
Too many of us, it seems, find it hard to understand that justifying acts of violence against those who disagree with you gives them ample reason to do the same to you.
‘We don’t need to agree’
“We do not need to agree on everything to stand firmly against violence,” Rabbi Jason Navarez of Congregation Beth Israel of San Diego posted to Instagram following Monday’s attack. “The Jewish community knows all too well the vulnerability that comes when sacred space is violated. That experience should not harden our hearts, but deepen our capacity to stand with others.”
The fact is that Jewish and Muslim Americans, despite our political differences, both face the threat of political violence and hate crimes.
Jewish and Muslim houses of worship are both disproportionately targeted for violence. Jewish congregations make up just 3.2% of all congregations nationwide, but account for 22% of the attacks against houses of worship, according to a 2023 A-Mark Foundation study. (I was CEO of the A-Mark Foundation at the time of this research.) Just 0.6% of religious congregations nationwide are Muslim, yet attacks against mosques and Islamic centers account for 17% of the attacks.
Inside the vehicles of the two teenagers believed to have opened fire on the Islamic Center, killing three people before taking their own lives, authorities found gasoline cans decorated with Nazi insignia and hate literature. Muslims and Jews in this country face a common menace in the kind of hate that appears to have influenced these teens — and there are far more useful ways of fighting it than, as Loomer would have it, blaming each other.
Work to do together
First and foremost: Stop justifying violence, period. Stop glorifying terror. Stop demonizing groups other than your own. Whether from the pulpit or on social media accounts, religious leaders need to set an example.
I get the anger, fear and distrust over the imam’s statements following Oct. 7 — that’s human. But the Jewish leaders that condemned the shooting and offered support were right to do so in spite of his words — that’s humanity.
Part of me hopes that the connections made because of that solidarity, following this tragedy, will create a new opening for mutual respect. Maybe, maybe not. What should certainly come out of it is an awareness that we have a common enemy, and a common struggle.
Here’s where to start:
•Help the victims. Attacks on houses of worship are now terrifyingly common. The A-Mark report counted 59 attacks between 2012 and 2022 — and things have gotten worse since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, and the subsequent war in Gaza. Inevitably, society moves on. But even if there are no dead or wounded, the scars linger. “The aftermath is just devastating,” Rabbi Jen Lader of Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Mich. — which recently weathered a ramming attack — told NPR. Muslims and Jews can work together to offer lasting support for victims of such violence: volunteering and donating to help rebuild damaged buildings and supporting congregants in their physical and emotional healing.
• Secure our institutions. As the attack was unfolding, leaders of Jewish Federations of North America were in Washington. D.C. seeking $1 billion in security funding for houses of worship of all faiths. This is lobbying Jews and Muslims can do together, including standing together against the administration’s conditioning of security funding on cooperation with Immigration and Custom Enforcement activities.
• Advocate for stronger gun laws. This may be the most Pollyanna-ish of all suggestions, but safe storage and gun lock laws are common in many countries, all of which have far fewer mass shootings than the U.S. It’s a cause Muslim and Jewish clergy can join in on pushing for.
• Finally, hold tech companies responsible for hate. More than half of all Americans have experienced harassment on social media, according to the ADL. Meta and TikTok’s own whistleblowers have said the companies promote hate to increase profits. Their algorithm “maximizes profits at the expense of their audience’s wellbeing,” they told the BBC. A Muslim-Jewish campaign to crack down on tech platforms that profit off hate groups and set their algorithms to push conflict could help make us all safer.
The teenagers who opened fire on the Islamic Center of San Diego didn’t care what the imam said about Gaza. They saw Muslims, and they wanted them dead — the same way the Pittsburgh and Poway shooters saw Jews. Our enemies are not making the distinctions we make about each other. Maybe it’s time we stopped making them too.
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An op-ed compared an NBA team to Israel as underdog success stories. Then the threats poured in.
With the reigning champion Oklahoma City Thunder fighting to return to the NBA Finals, one bold writer dug deep for an analogy: The Thunder, he wrote, is like the state of Israel — a former underdog now despised for its success.
The Oklahoman, a daily newspaper, published the opinion column on its website Monday morning, hours before the Thunder began their semifinal series against the San Antonio Spurs. The story was accompanied by an image of a basketball with the Israeli flag painted on it.
It did not survive to the game’s opening tip; by then, The Oklahoman had taken the article down without comment, amid waves of online ridicule that came from well beyond Oklahoma, from readers who saw Israel as unworthy of the comparison.
Amid the uproar, The Oklahoman distanced itself from the piece. Its executive editor, Ray Rivera, said in a statement sent to the Forward that the column had been “mistakenly published because our approval policies were not followed.”
“After further review, our team determined the content did not align with our opinion standards,” the statement continued. “We’re strengthening our review process to prevent future errors and deeply regret any distress this may have caused.”
The writer, a freelance contributor named Eitan Reshef, had intended to flatter. Reshef wrote that he was both Jewish and Oklahoman, and couldn’t shake the similarities in his rooting interests.
When Israel was attacked on Oct. 7, 2023, the Thunder were coming off of a season in which the team had finished with a losing record. But they have grown into one of the league’s titans since then — during which time Israel has been at war virtually without pause.
Some fans have criticized Thunder players for their penchant for earning free throws, regarding the tactic as unsportsmanlike.
Reshef wrote that he was proud of both Israel and his favorite team for persisting over the din of their critics.
“The Thunder are not hated because they somehow gamed the system,” Reshef wrote. “They are hated because they mastered it. Israel is not obsessively scrutinized because it failed, but due to its success despite deeply-rooted envy and darker historical motives.”
Many were quick to point out other reasons Israel is hated, but they weren’t the ones Reshef had in mind. “My tally has Chet Holmgren guilty of zero baby murders,” wrote one critic on Bluesky. Jeopardy! host Ken Jennings piled on, joking on the same social media platform that Reshef had suggested that “it’s antisemitic to not root for the OKC Thunder.”
Reshef told the Forward he had expected to get some blowback for the piece. But he was not prepared for the deluge of personal attacks he received.
Reshef shared screenshots of messages he received on social media and via email, calling him various profanities. “I hope you feel shame,” one wrote in a direct message, adding that he should be institutionalized. An X user, tagging Reshef in a public post, wrote, “Don’t let me find you.” The same user previously posted that “now we know why Hitler killed Jews.”
And in the comments of the Oklahoman’s Facebook post, Reshef saw one person he knew from his childhood. “‘I grew up with the guy who wrote it. He’s a moron,’” Reshef said the comment read. “This is someone I haven’t spoken to in 25 years, and actually, I would have thought he was my friend. But I guess he’s not.”
Reshef, who works in marketing, had never written an article for publication before. But after coming up with the idea, he wrote the column and submitted it to the Oklahoman via email. He received a reply from an editor he declined to name, which said that the newspaper planned to run it online Monday and in print next week. Reshef was not paid for the piece.
The Oklahoman did not consult or inform him about taking down the piece, he said, and had not replied to his email seeking explanation. And he was not sure whether he was disappointed that the newspaper had removed it, considering that perhaps its editors had been looking out for his safety.
This isn’t the first time anti-Israel sentiment has resounded among basketball fans.
The league’s most prominent Israeli player, Deni Avdija, was frequently the target of anti-Israel and even antisemitic hate from basketball fans online amid his own recent playoff success. And the Thunder itself is known as an Israel-friendly team: star Chet Holmgren was once mockingly nicknamed “Chetanyahu” for practicing in a gym where an Israeli flag hung.
The Thunder are once again the underdog, having lost Monday’s game in double-overtime.
Whether on the team’s record or on Israel’s, Reshef he had no regrets about what he had written.
“We can disagree with each other — we should disagree with each other,” he said. “I treasure that value. I’m willing to step up to the plate, talk to anybody, just talk to me. But to make personal attacks on me, as if you know me, or make threats. It’s frightening that that’s the world that we live in right now.”
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Trump national Shabbat divides America’s Jews ahead of National Mall prayer rally
(JTA) — As part of a 250th anniversary celebration of the United States, President Donald Trump is calling on Americans to pray together in a nine-hour marathon on the National Mall Sunday featuring a host of Christian speakers — and one rabbi.
But first, Trump is calling on Jews to mark Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest from sundown Friday to nightfall Saturday, and encouraging other Americans to consider embracing the ritual as well.
“In special honor of 250 glorious years of American independence and on the weekend of Rededicate 250 — a national jubilee of prayer, praise, and thanksgiving — Jewish Americans are encouraged to observe a national Sabbath,” Trump said in his Jewish American Heritage Month proclamation on May 4.
“From sundown on May 15 to nightfall on May 16, friends, families, and communities of all backgrounds may come together in gratitude for our great Nation,” he continued. “This day will recognize the sacred Jewish tradition of setting aside time for rest, reflection, and gratitude to the Almighty.”
The call marked the first time that an American president has formally urged the celebration of Shabbat. Trump’s daughter Ivanka, who converted to Judaism before marrying Jared Kushner, now a prominent Trump advisor, reportedly observes Shabbat according to traditional interpretations of Jewish law.
Trump’s call echoes the legacy of conservative Christian activist Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot in September. Kirk’s book detailing his own observance of a “Jewish Sabbath” every week was published posthumously.
The exhortation has received mixed reviews from the American Jewish community. Some Jews have said they appreciate the gesture and recognition of a central tradition to Judaism, and even are promoting their own Shabbat services as part of “Shabbat 250.”
Others say Trump is appropriating Judaism to promote conservative political goals and Christian nationalism, a movement backed by a portion of Trump’s base that scholars say could push the country in a direction that is less hospitable to Jews.
Support for the initiative has been strongest among Orthodox Jews, who tend to be more politically conservative. Rabbi Josh Joseph, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, endorsed Trump’s call soon after it was made.
“This weekend, following President Trump’s encouragement, we will mark Shabbat 250,” he said in a statement earlier this week. “We will pause to acknowledge all the blessings that the Almighty has provided American Jews through the unique devotion to liberty embedded in this nation.”
Some Orthodox synagogues, including many affiliated with the Chabad Hasidic movement, have announced “Shabbat 250” programming, such as dinners and special speakers. The group Young Jewish Conservatives, meanwhile, doled out $180 grants to conservative Jews under 35 who committed to hosting at least five people for a Shabbat dinner in their homes.
More than 7,500 people have declared on a new website, Shabbat250.org, their intention to observe Shabbat. Some Orthodox commentators tied Trump’s proclamation to the week’s Torah portion, which describes how the Israelites, having been freed from Egypt, took a census of themselves in the desert as their new nation came into focus.
“Today we celebrate the numbers, the 250th anniversary, but like a census, this milestone must also be a springboard from which to consider where America is going,” wrote Jonathan Feldstein, president of the Genesis 123 Foundation, a nonprofit that aims to build ties between Jews and Christians, on his Substack.
On the other side, Rabbi Jonah Pesner of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism is among the faith leaders scheduled to participate in a virtual event Friday morning that organizers say will “explain why so many religious Americans of diverse faiths are alarmed and alienated by attempts to use America’s 250th birthday as an opportunity to frame the US as a ‘Christian nation’ and to misrepresent the approach to religious tolerance and freedom adopted by our founders and Constitution.”
The perspective is shared widely on the Jewish left, where many leaders say it is inappropriate and harmful for Trump to involve himself in Shabbat.
“When the state meddles in our sacred affairs, blurring the already fuzzy lines between church and state, it doesn’t elevate the Sabbath; it diminishes the democracy that 250 years of history were supposed to protect,” Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie of the progressive Lab/Shul wrote in a blog post Wednesday. “I suggest we each adapt this ‘National Shabbat’ in our own unique way – not because a leader commanded it, but because our humanity demands it.”
The debate comes ahead of the prayer rally planned for the National Mall on Sunday. The event, called Rededicate 250, is organized by a nonprofit called Freedom 250, which is advertising an event lineup featuring Christian music as well as “Freedom Trucks” that provide educational material provided by the conservative advocacy group PragerU and the Christian classical school Hillsdale College.
Organizers are also promoting performances by U.S. military bands as well as participation from several Trump administration officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Trump himself is set to appear by video, and House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, will also take the stage.
Of the 33 prayer leaders set to appear, about half are of evangelical or non-denominational evangelical Christian practice. Baptist, Catholic and Seventh Day Adventist speakers will also speak.
The only non-Christian speaker on the lineup is Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, an Orthodox rabbi and senior scholar at the Tikvah Fund, a politically conservative Jewish think tank, who also sits on the Religious Liberty Commission that Trump created last year.
Rachel Laser, the Jewish CEO of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, denounced the rally as part of a rising tide of Christian nationalism.
“If President Trump and his allies truly cared about America’s legacy of religious freedom, they would be celebrating church-state separation as the unique American invention that has allowed religious diversity to flourish in our country,” she said in a statement. “Instead, they continue to threaten this foundational principle by advancing a Christian Nationalist crusade to impose one narrow version of Christianity on all Americans.”
The rally comes as Americans are growing more appreciative of religion, even if they do not necessarily practice any themselves. A new Pew Research Center report out this week shows that an increasing minority of American adults say religion is “gaining influence in American life” and more than half of Americans say religion plays a positive role in society.
The proportion of Americans who believe Christianity should be declared the official religion of the United States has grown slightly in recent years and now stands at 17%, according to the survey. A much larger proportion of Americans, 43%, said they believe Christianity should not be an official religion but that the government should promote Christian moral values.
The White House will host a reception to mark the start of Shabbat 250 late Friday afternoon.
The attention to Shabbat jolted by Trump’s proclamation has spurred a wave of non-political attention to Shabbat, too. The writer Daniella Greenbaum Davis, for example, explained rabbinic teachings in a column in the Washington Post urging non-Jews to consider adopting Shabbat as a mindfulness practice.
“Shabbat is a Jewish tradition,” Davis wrote. “But the case for a weekly day of rest, taking a formal break from worldly concerns, is universal.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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