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What to know about ‘Not On Our Dime,’ Zohran Mamdani’s bill targeting donations to Israeli settlements
In May 2023, a member of the New York State Assembly introduced a bill aimed at blocking nonprofits from funding Israeli settlements in the West Bank. It was swiftly rebuked by his colleagues and never came to a vote.
That bill was called “Not on our dime!: Ending New York funding of Israeli settler violence act,” and the assemblymember was democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani. Now, Mamdani is an emblem of shifting sentiments against Israel — among New Yorkers and Americans nationwide — as he verges on being elected the mayor of New York City.
While “Not On Our Dime” had a short run in Albany, its specter has loomed large over the mayor’s race, particularly for Jewish New Yorkers who are wary of Mamdani because of his attitudes about Israel. Over 1,150 rabbis nationwide, including hundreds in New York City, have signed a letter warning that Jews would be stripped of their “safety and dignity” if anti-Zionism is “normalized” in the city’s halls of power.
Mamdani told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a questionnaire last week that he would prioritize his local affordability agenda as mayor. But he also did not reject the idea of enacting “Not On Our Dime”-style legislation in New York City.
“Charities and nonprofits that receive a taxpayer subsidy should not support the violation of international law, and that’s what the right-wing Israeli settlement project is doing,” said Mamdani. “An effort that goes against the stated foreign policy of our own government, going back several decades.”
Here is what “Not On Our Dime” actually said, what its supporters and critics argued, and what its implications could be for New York City under Mamdani.
What the legislation said
“Not On Our Dime” proposed amending the state’s nonprofit law to “prohibit not-for-profit corporations from engaging in unauthorized support of Israeli settlement activity.” Mamdani said it would stop the flow of about $60 million a year from New York-based charities to settlements deemed illegal under international law.
The bill defined “unauthorized support for Israeli settlement activity” as “aiding and abetting” any violation of the 1949 Geneva Conventions by Israel or its citizens. According to the bill, this included the illegal transfer of Israelis into “occupied territory” (defined as the West Bank and East Jerusalem), acts of violence against people living in occupied territory, forced eviction and the seizure or destruction of Palestinian land or property. Mamdani did not tell JTA whether he believed that “unauthorized support” should extend to humanitarian aid for Israelis in the relevant areas.
The bill said nonprofits that spent at least $1 million in violation could be sued, fined by the state attorney general and lose their tax-exempt status. Palestinians and others who said they were harmed by a violation would also be allowed to sue the nonprofits.
“Not On Our Dime” was co-sponsored by four other democratic socialists in the Assembly — Sarahana Shrestha, Phara Souffrant Forrest, Marcela Mitaynes and Emily Gallagher — along with the New York chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. It emerged from a campaign from left-leaning nonprofits such as the Center for Constitutional Rights, the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, the Adalah Justice Project and Jewish Voice for Peace.
The groups said on a website for the campaign that they believed nonprofits supporting Israeli settlements should be shut down. “This pioneering legislation makes explicit what is implicit–that a certain class of activities are fundamentally inconsistent with a charitable purpose, and should therefore subject an organization to dissolution,” the website said.
Mamdani told the Jewish Press, an Orthodox newspaper in New York, that he had met with those groups before proposing the legislation, which was accompanied by a state Senate version sponsored by DSA member Jabari Brisport. He also said he viewed the legislation as unlikely to prevail — but crucial to raising awareness about an important issue.
“I believe the attorney general has the jurisdiction now to pursue measures of accountability with regards to these organizations. The likelihood of that is minimal and I think that’s why there is the necessity for this legislation,” he told the newspaper at the time. “I’m under no illusion about the long journey that this legislation has to travel on. I do believe it is a critical first step to even inform New Yorkers.”
There was no precedent for a law that sought to block U.S. charities from funding Israeli settlements. Several states, including New York, have passed measures that took an opposite stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by punishing organizations that boycotted Israel.
Andrew Cuomo, Mamdani’s closest competitor in the mayoral race who is running as an independent, enacted one of these policies as the governor of New York. In 2016, he passed an executive order that banned state agencies from investing in companies and organizations that promoted or engaged in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.
Mamdani has long supported that movement, which calls for government measures to pressure Israel into withdrawing from the West Bank and granting full equality to Palestinians.
What happened when it was introduced
The legislation sparked a surge of energy among pro-Palestinian activists, with over 500 people marching in support in New York City. In Albany, Mamdani announced the bill together with pro-Palestinian activists including Rosalind Petchesky, a retired political scientist who would later feature prominently in his mayoral campaign.
Petchesky, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace, told the press that “Jews are not a monolith.” She added, “We do not all support the state of Israel, we are not all Zionists, many take the position of supporting Palestinians and Palestinian human rights.”
But in the state government, backlash was quick. Democratic Assemblymembers Nily Rozic and Daniel Rosenthal — who are both Jewish, with Rosenthal since leaving for a position at UJA-Federation of New York — denounced “Not On Our Dime” in an open letter signed by 25 lawmakers. They said the bill was “a ploy to demonize Jewish charities with connections to Israel” that would “further sow divisions within the Democratic Party.”
Their letter did not mention Israeli settlements, but said that “Not On Our Dime” sought to attack Jewish groups with “missions from feeding the poor to providing emergency medical care for victims of terrorism to clothing orphans.”
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie told the Forward the bill was a “non-starter,” and it did not advance. (Two years later, Heastie endorsed Mamdani for mayor in September.)
Meanwhile, all 48 Assembly Republicans denounced the bill as “utterly vicious” in their own joint letter. “This bill seeks to penalize non-profit entities that have any affiliation with the state of Israel and is effectively an attack on Jews and Israel,” they wrote. “As Americans, we find this bill to be not only discriminatory but also deeply anti-Semitic.”
What the bill’s advocates said
Supporters of the legislation said it would cut off a major source of funding for organizations that push Palestinians out of their homes and support violent extremists. Between 2009 and 2013, private donors sent over $220 million to West Bank settlements through about 50 tax-exempt nonprofits, according to a 2015 investigation by Haaretz.
“Aiding and abetting war crimes is not charitable, period,” said Vince Warren, director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which backed the bill, in 2023. “This bill goes a long way toward ensuring that New York is not inadvertently subsidizing war crimes, but rather creating paths for accountability.”
Mamdani and other advocates rejected the idea that the bill would constrain appropriate charitable work. “Organizations, including Jewish organizations that feed the poor, provide emergency medical care and clothe orphans take up noble causes for which New York state should provide the benefits of charitable status,” he told the Jewish Press at the time. “This is why the bill does not apply to such groups. The rhetorical tactics employed by this letter to suggest otherwise is an attempt to avoid the issue at hand: settlements.”
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Mamdani and his co-sponsors relaunched “Not On Our Dime” in May 2024 as Israel and Hamas battled in Gaza, saying they would revise the bill to prohibit “aiding and abetting” Israeli resettlement of Gaza and “unauthorized support” for Israeli military actions that broke international law. Mamdani said he believed the bill had a better chance then, as it reflected “newfound consciousness in our country with regards to the urgency of Palestinian human rights.”
In fact, “Not On Our Dime” had no better prospects in Albany — but it gained traction on the national stage. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive star who represents the Bronx and Queens but rarely steps into state politics, gave the bill her endorsement.
“It is more important now than ever to hold the Netanyahu government accountable for endorsing and, in fact, supporting some of this settler violence that prevents a lasting peace,” said Ocasio-Cortez at the time. Her backing, a year before she would endorse Mamdani for mayor, signaled the rising crescendo of a left wing animated by criticism of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
What the bill’s critics said
Critics said the bill would punish Jewish organizations that provide a range of humanitarian services internationally, including to people living in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Sara Forman, who leads the pro-Israel group New York Solidarity Network, called it “antisemitic and unconstitutional state-level nonsensical legislation.”
“This bogus bill, which is extremely vague, would force Jewish charities to quadruple check every penny and every cause related to Israel, tie up their time, cast suspicion on all their work, and stifle critical dollars dedicated to meaningful causes in Israel and the United States, from education to anti-poverty efforts,” Forman said in 2024.
Even some people who partly share Mamdani’s critique of the settlement movement and the Israeli government said the bill went too far.
Rabbi Jill Jacobs, head of the rabbinic human rights organization T’ruah, has herself attempted to block U.S. funding to the most violent Israeli settler groups. Since 2016, T’ruah has filed complaints with the IRS about nonprofits like the Central Fund of Israel, which funnels millions in tax-exempt donations to Israeli groups that fund militant Jewish supremacists. T’ruah’s reasoning was that leaders of these extremist organizations have been indicted or convicted of terrorism in Israel, and U.S. law prohibits sending tax-exempt donations to terrorist groups.
Mamdani specifically mentioned the Manhattan-based Central Fund of Israel during his 2023 press circuit for “Not On Our Dime.” But Jacobs opposed the bill, even as her own efforts failed to stop the flow of money to extremist groups. She said it was too broad, allowing for the possibility of targeting nonprofits beyond terrorists and groups directly involved in building settlements.
“Because of the vagueness of the language, it could potentially be construed to relate to any nonprofit that is putting the baseline of $1 million into settlements,” Jacobs said in an interview. “It could include a group that’s doing support for victims of terror, and a large percentage of them might be living over the Green Line. It could be construed to include American Friends of Hebrew University, because that’s in East Jerusalem.”
In criticizing the legislation, Jacobs referenced the Talmudic idiom “tafasta meruba lo tafasta” — or, “if you grasped too much, you did not grasp anything.”
What “Not On Our Dime” means for a Mayor Mamdani
New York City mayors have long endeavored to show support for Israel, dating back even before it became a state in 1948. In 1923, Mayor John Hylan called on New Yorkers to contribute “generous support” to a fund for building a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Then as now, the city had the largest Jewish population in the world.
But this year, the mayor’s race overlapped with a war that sent opinions of Israel in the United States plunging to new lows, with images of dying Palestinian children and destruction spreading across social media and protesters, including many American Jews and New Yorkers, rallying against Israel’s campaign in Gaza.
Mamdani surged in that context, winning the Democratic mayoral nomination and rocketing to fame at the same time as Israel drew its sharpest and most widespread criticism. The timing was right for Mamdani, who is 34 and formed his political identity as a young man around a cause that had never before found a champion in Gracie Mansion: Palestinian rights and independence.
He has pledged to take some actions locally to advance those views, including arresting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if the Israeli leader sets foot in New York City, not investing the city’s pension funds in Israel bonds and dismantling a New York-Israel economic cooperation initiative.
Mamdani has not said he would propose legislation comparable to “Not On Our Dime” as mayor. Still, some New Yorkers concerned about his stances on Israel are asking if he would attempt a city-level version of the bill — and how that would affect their lives.
In August, a caller to WNYC’s “Brian Lehrer Show” asked whether such legislation would penalize their synagogue for donating to Jewish emergency response groups that operate globally, including in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. In an on-air interview, Lehrer relayed this question to Mamdani, who brushed off the concern.
Jacobs said that outcome would be unlikely under the legislation as it was written, given its $1 million threshold.
“I guess if there were a synagogue that was raising $1 million for a settlement, then if this bill had passed, maybe it would say that synagogue couldn’t do that. But I don’t know if that is a situation that actually exists,” she said.
Jeremy Cohan, a leader in the New York City chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, is part of the Jewish left that has strengthened Mamdani’s rise. In his own interview with Lehrer in October, Cohan articulated his understanding of “Not On Our Dime” and why he believed it would resonate with New York City voters.
“The ‘Not On Our Dime’ bill was designed to say, ‘Hey, if you’re committing violations of international law, if you’re funneling money to organizations that are committing violations of international law, that are aiming to dispossess people of their land illegally, that are complicit in war crimes, we are going to not subsidize that as New York State. New York State stands for something. We don’t stand for war crimes,’” he said.
“I do think that so much of the choice, or a decent part of the choice, facing New Yorkers is, do New Yorkers want a mayor who takes war crimes seriously, or do they want a mayor like Andrew Cuomo who defends war crimes and genocide,” Cohan continued. “I think they want a mayor who opposes war crimes and prioritizes their interests, which Zohran Mamdani will do.”
“Not On Our Dime” shows Mamdani is a politician with a track record of taking action on his beliefs, whether or not he believes he will quickly effect change. And in his victory speech after the Democratic primary, he identified himself as one of “millions of New Yorkers who have strong feelings about what happens overseas.”
He acknowledged that many in the city disagreed with his ideas and said he would seek to understand their perspectives. But in a sign of how he would hold to his views of Israel and Palestine as the mayor of New York City, he said, “I will not abandon my beliefs or my commitments grounded in a demand for equality, for humanity, for all those who walk this earth.”
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In Israel’s missile war, some families run to shelters. Others have nowhere to go.
(JTA) — JERUSALEM — Walking with her children in Pisgat Zeev, a leafy neighborhood in Jerusalem, on Monday afternoon, Rivka recalled the missile that flew nearby the day before.
An impact could be felt as the family hunkered in their private “mamad” or safe room, required in all new homes in the Jewish neighborhood. Those who live in older homes or were far from their residence found their nearest public shelter.
When her children started to cry, Rivka said, she reassured them that the walls of the shelter are strong enough to withstand anything Iran could send toward Israel. “We feel safe in our shelters,” she said.
Just a few miles south, in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, father of three Abed Abu Sharif recalled how he was driving his taxi on Sunday when he heard the unmistakable sound of an air raid alert.
Israeli authorities advise anyone driving when a warning siren sounds to exit their vehicle and look for the nearest public shelter. Abu Sharif knew he would not find one.
“Where am I to go? What am I to do? There is no shelter for me near here,” he said. “I continue driving because I have to provide for my family.”
The disparate experiences point to longstanding gaps in shelter access that are being thrown into stark relief once again by war.
The access gaps exist both geographically — with residents of the country’s dense center more protected — and between Jewish and Arab Israelis.
A Knesset hearing on Monday took aim at the significant number of Israelis who do not have ready access to shelters near their home, with lawmakers expressing frustration over the lack of support for shelter construction despite the constant threat of war since Oct. 7, 2023.
“In my view, this situation is abandonment of human life. Nothing less,” Oded Forer of the Yisrael Beiteinu party said during the hearing. “And it is happening right now, as people try to run to safe rooms, but they don’t have them.”
The hearing only briefly discussed disparities between Jewish and Arab Israeli communities in shelter access, citing statistics from the Israel Defense Forces’ Home Front Command. The statistics — revealed publicly last week — show that only 37 of 11,775 public shelters in Israel, or roughly 0.3%, are located in Arab municipalities, even though Arabs make up about 15% of Israel’s population.
That information dates to January 2025, before last year’s war with Iran. While both the Home Front Command and Israel’s comptroller told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that a newer accounting was not available, Ori Narov, who leads the legal department of the Israel Religious Action Center, said he had received government data showing that roughly a third of the 1,500 shelters installed last year in Israel’s north went to Arab municipalities — a development that he cited as a rare sign of progress in Jewish-Arab equity.
Still, there is only one public bomb shelter in east Jerusalem, according to Bimkom-Planners for Planning Rights, a group advocating for equitable built environments in Israel.
“This is an issue of equity,” said Bimkom’s Dafna Saporta. “We’re talking about the Arab population. They don’t have equality, and they don’t have justice in Israel. The state is taking care of the Jewish population but neglecting the Arabs. It’s not new. It’s a political decision.”
National civil defense standards are set by the Home Front Command, while planning approval rests with local planning authorities, and cities are typically responsible for maintaining public shelters.
“As per the Civil Defense Law, public shelter construction is the responsibility of local authorities, whereas personal protection is an individual responsibility,” Home Front Command said in a statement responding to a request for comment on disparities in shelter access between Arab and Jewish communities in Israel.
It added, “The Home Front Command also takes measures to provide individual protection and to renovate public shelters, based on guidance from the political echelon and government decisions.”
Oct. 7, the subsequent conflict with Hezbollah and last year’s 12-day war with Iran drew stark attention to disparities that had deepened over time. A missile landed in Rahat, an Arab city in the south, killing multiple residents, and another strike in Tamra, in the north, killed several members of the same family.
Some efforts are underway to close the gap. A government initiative called Northern Shield worked to install shelters last year in homes and schools within a buffer zone of the Lebanese border, where rockets from Hezbollah are again flying now.
Nonprofit groups have also stepped into the gap. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, meanwhile, says it has worked with the government to install 700 shelters since Oct. 7, including several this week and some in a Druze village and in Haifa, a mixed city with large populations of both Jews and Arabs.
And the Israeli organization Standing Together, which advocates coexistence between Arabs and Jewish Israelis, has launched a campaign to crowdfund shelters for vulnerable Arab communities in the Negev.
But advocates say the efforts are far outmatched by the need. “While these initiatives are well-intentioned and deeply appreciated, the scale of the need in the unrecognized villages far exceeds the capacity of civil society,” Huda Abu Obaid, CEO of the Negev Coexistence Forum, said about the crowdfunding campaigns.
The Negev Coexistence Forum joined a lawsuit filed by the Reform movement-affiliated IRAC at the Supreme Court of Israel in 2024, alleging that Israel’s failure to build public shelters in Arab communities was a violation of their civil rights.
The government’s defense rested on high rates of illegal construction in Arab municipalities, which, in their view, absolved them of responsibility to ensure that mamads are installed in new homes. (Retrofitting mamads into older buildings is difficult and costly and not within the budget of any municipality, Arab or Jewish.)
The court sided with the government, ruling that the responsibility for building protective spaces rests with private homeowners and that the state is not obligated to build public shelters.
For Narov, the situation in the Negev is particularly galling because the extant planning process does not account for many Bedouin Arabs living there.
“They are not municipalities recognized by the government, so they can’t even build the shelters if they wanted to,” Narov said. He added, “This is the first responsibility of any state to its citizens: security to keep them safe from attacks, from the inside and definitely from the outside, as we’re experiencing right now.”
“If the law requires a protected room in every new building, but thousands of citizens are prevented from building legally or live in areas excluded from state planning frameworks, then the legal standard itself produces inequality,” Abu Obaid said. “Protection should not depend on municipal status, planning recognition or economic ability. It should be universal.”
The mandate that all new construction include a safe room in each unit or a basement shelter, first enacted in the 1990s, shifted Israel’s safeguards away from public shelters. That includes in east Jerusalem, which is administered by the the city of Jerusalem Municipality and hence the Israeli government, where no additional public shelters have been built in the last decade.
On March 2, an Iranian missile landed at the entrance to Ramat Shlomo, just a few kilometers from the neighborhood, injuring six Israelis.
Fatme, a doctor at a hospital in Jerusalem who was riding bus 218 toward the Qalandia checkpoint at the end of her workday on Monday, passed the crater on her way home. Still, she said, the debate was of little practical significance to her.
“There isn’t a single shelter in my neighborhood,” she said. “So when I hear the bombs, I just go on with my day.”
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Trump says Iran war is ‘very complete, pretty much’ as US and Israel continue to pound Tehran
(JTA) — President Donald Trump gave mixed signals about the status of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran on Monday, telling reporters that the war was “very complete, pretty much” even as he said that he would make a “mutual” decision with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about its end.
At the same time, he threatened Iran in a post on Truth Social, saying, “If Iran does anything that stops the flow of Oil within the Strait of Hormuz, they will be hit by the United States of America TWENTY TIMES HARDER than they have been hit thus far.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said Tuesday would be “the most intense day” of strikes yet – while also noting that the pace of Iran’s missiles had slowed.
Three people have died from missile strikes in the last two days in Israel, as well as two Israeli soldiers killed when their tank was attacked while they fought Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon. One of the soldiers killed was from Majdal Shams, a Druze town in Israel’s north where 12 children were killed by a Hezbollah rocket in 2024.
Trump’s comments come as oil prices surge amid disruption in the Middle East that has turned several U.S. allies in the region into Iranian targets. A leading pro-Israel senator has urged Israel to refrain from targeting Iranian oil depots, reflecting anxiety over sharply rising gas prices.
Trump told the Times of Israel that while Netanyahu would have input in the timing to end the war, he would make the final decision. He also declined to entertain the idea of Israel continuing to fight Iran after the United States exits, saying, “I don’t think it’s going to be necessary.”
Iranian officials, meanwhile, have vowed to continue fighting “as long as it takes” and are prepared for a long war.
And Netanyahu said on Tuesday morning that “more is to come” in the war.
The comments come as U.S. and Israeli forces continue to bomb targets in Iran in an attempt to end the country’s military ambitions, destroy its missile arsenal and potentially topple its Islamic Republic regime.
This week, the regime appointed Mojtaba Khamenei, the hard-line son of the assassinated supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as its new supreme leader in a show of defiance. Trump has said he is “not happy” with the choice and would like to see someone else installed.
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When observant Jews gathered to challenge pro-Israel orthodoxy, verbal sparring and walkouts ensued
Hundreds of observant Jews convened at a Manhattan synagogue on Sunday to foster an alternative to the prevailing right-wing discourse about Israeli and American politics in the Orthodox world. But the conference also surfaced uncomfortable arguments within the dissent, with some attendees walking out of one session in protest.
The gathering at B’nai Jeshurun marked the second annual conference for the U.S. chapter of Smol Emuni, which translates as “the faithful left” — a counterpart to a group of the same name working in Israel and the West Bank. A diverse group of speakers that included both Zionists and anti-Zionists grappled with settler violence, humanitarian and spiritual crises sparked by the war in Gaza, and religious rhetoric surrounding the war in Iran.
The big-tent approach gave voice to Americans, Israelis and Palestinians frustrated with Israel’s political direction — and led to some pointed exchanges, including a conference organizer’s public rebuke of the event’s headliner, Rabbi Saul Berman.
Berman, an activist in the American civil rights movement and the former senior rabbi of the Orthodox Lincoln Square Synagogue, went off-topic from his keynote speech to deliver a broad critique of Islam in response to comments about Zionism made by a peace group leader in an earlier session.
For attendees who spoke with the Forward, the conference provided much-needed solidarity in a Jewish milieu that tends to sideline even mild criticism of Israel. It also showed the fledgling movement’s identity being worked out in real time.
“It’s very hard to thread the needle and say, “OK, I am progressive, and I am a Zionist, and I disagree with some things that the Israeli government is doing,” attendee Riva Atlas, a New Yorker who works as a financial researcher, told the Forward.
‘We respectfully disagree’
A morning panel about Gaza brought a few charged moments.
Among the panelists was Gregory Khalil, who co-founded the Israeli-Palestinian peacebuilding nonprofit Telos Group and advised the Palestine Liberation Organization on peace negotiations with Israel from 2004 to 2008.
In his remarks, he asked the overwhelmingly Jewish audience to understand the situation of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank from their perspective — and to recognize that hardline Zionism can be an obstacle to reducing conflict.
Khalil said that Palestinians have been treated as an exception when it comes to the principle of universal human rights, and that “resistance” was inevitable as a result.
“The world often operates in two plus two equals four,” Khalil said. “For years, starve them, bomb them, tell them that they’re the criminals. People are going to resist.”
Asked whether he saw the conflict as theological in nature, Khalil said it was a “semantic question,” but that “Zionism very much functions like a religion” because it is often framed as “an article of faith beyond critique.”
Moderator David Myers, a Jewish history professor at UCLA, urged Khalil not to discount that Zionism has theological underpinnings for many Jews — “to think very seriously about considering the theological something other than a sort of new semantics.”
Rabbi Mikhael Manekin, a founder of Israel’s Smol Emuni movement who was joining by Zoom, added that “no matter what word you use to identify yourself — Zionist, non-Zionist, anti-Zionist — at the end of the day, so much of our tradition centers the holiness of the land of Israel. So one still needs to have a conversation about that. A third of our Mishnah is about keeping commandments in Israel.”
Toward the end of the panel, Khalil said he “almost got up and left” because he felt that there was not enough time devoted to talking directly about the devastation in Gaza.
The exchange rankled Berman, who hours later brought them back up in his address to the general session.
The rabbi, who famously led a megillah reading in jail after he was arrested in 1965 marching for voting rights in Selma, Alabama, expressed disappointment in the morning panelists, diverging from his assigned topic of the struggle over ICE immigration raids in Minneapolis.
“I did not appreciate the assertion that somehow the Jewish passion for Israel need not be heard,” Berman said. “I didn’t appreciate the sense that the theological root of Zionism is the source of horror and enmity and evil.”
Berman added his view that the “theological position within Islam is fundamentally at the root of the incapacity of the Islamic world to recognize the rights of Israel to exist as a Jewish state,” and that idea is “taught actively by imams all over the world, including here in the United States.”
During Berman’s comments, several attendees walked out of the sanctuary. One audience member held up a “BOOO” sign, scrawled on a piece of paper.
One of the conference organizers took to the mic to publicly push back on the esteemed speaker.
“We invited you to speak about immigration and you expressed other views. We appreciate hearing them. As organizers of Smol Emuni, we want to say that we respectfully disagree, but we’re very glad to have you here with us,” Rachel Landsberg, Smol Emuni’s program director, said to applause.
Berman, a graduate of Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, had represented the Orthodox mainstream in a lineup that also featured Conservative rabbis and ex-Hasidic Jews, and had top billing on conference promotional materials.
Yet he had been an imperfect fit from the outset. In an interview after the conference, Smol Emuni executive director Esther Sperber said Berman had expressed prior to accepting an invitation to speak that he disagreed with the organization’s approach to Israel.
Sperber said she was honored that the rabbi — whom she described as “one of the luminaries of the Modern Orthodox world” — attended the whole day. But she took offense at his comments, which she felt painted all of Islam with a broad brush.
“Our intention was for the conference to focus on what we as Orthodox and observant Jews can do better,” Sperber said. “And I think our sense was that Rabbi Berman’s comments were more focused on what Palestinians can do better.”
Sperber added that the Smol Emuni movement is “not looking to include everyone in the Jewish world” but welcomes anyone who identifies with the religious left and supports universal human rights for Palestinians.
‘Whispered invitations’
While the clashes punctuated the gathering, other sessions more quietly worked through challenging topics, including ICE and immigration policy, grounded in the Torah’s call to protect the stranger; a screening of Children No More, a documentary about activists holding silent vigils in Tel Aviv for children killed by the Israeli military in Gaza; a conversation about “Zionism and Nationalism in the Haredi Community”; and a session about creating more nuanced Israel curriculum in Jewish schools.
Several speakers described the difficulty of challenging what can seem like a strong uncritically pro-Israel consensus in religious Zionist communities.
“Close friends in Israel — decent, religious, fair minded and highly educated people — sent me the following reading on Purim. I shudder as I read the words: ‘A bomb has been dropped in Tehran in your honor. Purim Sameach,’” Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller told the crowd. “What an obscene perversion. A sickness has overtaken the religious Zionist community.”
Some spoke despite potential repercussions in their communities, while others remained silent observers. One conference attendee declined to speak with the Forward, citing potential backlash from his Israel-aligned congregation if they learned he had attended.
Gershon Rosenberg, a junior at the modern Orthodox Jewish day school SAR Academy in the Bronx, said during the Israel education panel that he faced intense backlash from his community after writing an op-ed in his school newspaper arguing for a broader understanding of the conflict in Gaza. But he also found peers expressing support.
“A lot of people would reach out to me and say, ‘It was so meaningful for me to see someone else, a young person, show that I’m not alone, that there are a lot of other people out there in the Orthodox community who have these persuasions,’” Rosenberg said.
Rabbi Sharon Brous, who leads the unaffiliated Los Angeles synagogue Ikar, said a local Smol Emuni gathering, organized through “whispered invitations,” had helped attendees realize their views on Israel were more widely held than they had assumed.
Sperber, who grew up in Israel and now lives in New York City, said she felt like she was “living in a different reality” than her family due to their political differences.
Most troubling to her, she said, was leaders citing Jewish tradition to enact vengeance.
“The situation in Israel and the region is dangerous and combustible, but my other very deep, deep concern is not just the danger of war, but its corruption of our faith and our Judaism,” Sperber said. “Our tradition has been hijacked.”
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