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American rabbis, wrestling with Israel’s behavior, weigh different approaches from the pulpit
(JTA) — Rabbi Sharon Brous began a sermon at her Los Angeles synagogue last month with a content warning. “I have to say some things today that I know will upset some of you,” she began.
That same morning, across the country in New York City, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl was confessing something to her congregants, too: The sermon they were about to hear “kept me up at night.”
Both women — among the most prominent and influential Jewish clergy in the United States — went on to sharply criticize Israel’s new right-wing government, which includes far-right parties that aim to curb the rights of LGBTQ Israelis, Arabs and non-Orthodox Jews.
In taking aim at Israel’s government from the pulpit, the rabbis were veering close to what many in their field consider a third rail. “You have a wonderful community and you love them and they love you, until the moment you stand up and you give your Israel sermon,” Brous told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The phenomenon even has an informal name, she said: “Death by Israel sermon.”
Brous would know: A decade ago, she was the target of sharp criticism after she encouraged her congregants at IKAR, a nondenominational congregation, to pray for Palestinians as well as Jews during a period of conflict in Israel. The incident didn’t end her pulpit, but she has come to understand why many rabbis choose what she called “the path of silence” when it comes to Israel.
Now, she said, American Jews must depart from that path. “I want you to hear me,” she said in her sermon. “There is a revolution that is happening, and this moment demands an awakening on both sides of the sea, an honest reckoning.”
All over the country, non-Orthodox rabbis are making similar calculations in response to Israel’s new governing coalition, which has drawn widespread protests over its policy moves. (Orthodox communities, including their rabbis, tend to be more politically conservative and skew to the right of non-Orthodox communities on Israel issues.) Israel’s government is advancing an overhaul of the legal system that would sap the power of the Supreme Court, and is also contending with an escalating wave of violence.
Some rabbis feel more emboldened to speak aloud what they have long believed. Others are finding themselves reconsidering their own relationship to Israel — and bringing their congregants along on their journey. A few still feel that criticizing Israel from the pulpit is a misguided and even dangerous venture, one that could splinter American Jewish communities.
What cuts across the spectrum is a belief that Israel has been discussed too little from the synagogue pulpit. Brous said the tendency of liberal rabbis not to talk about Israel lest they anger their more conservative congregants has resulted in a painful reality: “American Jews have not developed the muscle that we now need to respond to this regime.”
Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City launched a new program called Amplify Israel, which he hopes will encourage Reform movement leaders to embrace Zionism even as they navigate a “deeply problematic and even offensive” new Israeli government. (Shahar Azran/Stephen Wise Free Synagogue)
Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, meanwhile, believes today’s rabbis must be vocal in fending off the influence of “competing values” about Zionism from “various organizations that are either cool on Israel or don’t like Israel or just downright anti-Zionist.”
Last year, angered by a letter signed by dozens of rabbinical students denouncing Israel’s actions during its 2021 conflict with Hamas in Gaza, Hirsch launched an initiative based at his New York City Reform synagogue to equip rabbis with tools to counter what he said was “the growing influence of an anti-Zionist element” in the next generation of Jewish clergy.
The initiative, Amplify Israel, is housed at his Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, and employs another rabbi, Tracy Kaplowitz, to work full-time to galvanize leaders from across the Reform movement to support Israel. Kaplowitz jokes that her new job won’t be complete “until every Reform Jew is a Zionist.”
Hirsch knows the new coalition is complicating his task. “The new government is going to make our promotion of Israel more difficult in the United States,” he said, noting that the government “has elements in it that are deeply problematic and even offensive to most American Jews.”
He and Kaplowitz contend that it is possible, in their view, for rabbis to criticize aspects of the Israeli government from the pulpit while still remaining broadly supportive of the Jewish state and encouraging their congregants to be the same. They also say the need to build Zionist sentiment within the American rabbinate transcends any particular moment, including this one.
“If we have to transform how we connect to Israel each time there’s an election, we’ll be driving ourselves a little bit batty,” Kaplowitz said.
Rabbi Tracy Kaplowitz is a full-time Israel Fellow at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City. She jokes that her job won’t be finished “until every Reform Jew is a Zionist.” (Ryen Greiss/Stephen Wise Free Synagogue)
Hirsch sits on the advisory board of another new pro-Israel initiative, the Zionist Rabbinic Coalition. Helmed by Stuart Weinblatt, senior rabbi at Conservative Congregation B’nai Tzedek in Potomac, Maryland, the group is an interdenominational network of more than 200 rabbis who advocate to ”strengthen the ties between American Jewry and the State of Israel.”
Weinblatt hews to an early generation’s view of how rabbis should approach Israel from the pulpit. He told JTA that he believes his colleagues should always be supportive of Israel in public, even if they choose to pressure the Israeli government and advocate against certain policies in private — which, he says, is “the appropriate vehicle” for voicing concerns. “My position has always been that support for Israel should be unconditional,” he said.
“If we as rabbis are sharply critical of Israel, the result can often lead to a distancing from Israel, which ultimately may diminish the connection people feel to Judaism and the Jewish people,” he added. “People do not always distinguish and differentiate between opposition to a particular policy and broader criticisms of Israel which can do lasting damage.”
Asked whether the Israeli government could ever conceivably take a step that would necessitate a public response from American rabbis, Weinblatt ruminated for days. He ultimately told JTA that the current debate around proposed changes to the Law of Return, the Israeli policy that allows anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent to claim citizenship, would be such an example, as that is a policy that would have a direct effect on Diaspora Jews.
Tightening who is eligible under the Law of Return is in fact a goal of some elements of Israel’s governing coalition, although the Diaspora minister assured an audience in the United States that, unlike with the proposed changes to the government’s judicial system — which have earned criticism across the political spectrum — there would be an effort to build consensus and no changes would happen overnight.
Still, the prospect of such a change so alarmed Rabbi Hillel Skolnick of Congregation Tifereth Israel in Columbus, Ohio, that he traveled to Jerusalem to address the Knesset, Israel’s lawmaking body.
“The members of my congregation and my movement have a spiritual connection with Judaism and also a political connection because we live in a democracy, so they see a Jewish democracy as an ideal that they can look to as a light unto the nations,” he said, in a speech he delivered as a representative of the Conservative/Masorti movement.
“By even questioning the idea of the Law of Return,” he went on, Israel “takes away from both the Jewish connection and the democratic connection they have with this country.”
Skolnick suggested that he was unsure of how to speak to his congregation about the new government and its agenda. “My question to you is, what message can I go home with?” he asked.
Rabbi Stuart Weinblatt, founder and chair of the Zionist Rabbinic Coalition, shown with Israeli President Isaac Herzog. Weinblatt believes American rabbis’ “support for Israel should be unconditional,” and that disagreements with its government should be hashed out in private. (Courtesy of Stuart Weinblatt)
This week, hundreds of American rabbis will be returning to their congregations with messages honed by a week in Israel. The Reform movement just concluded its biennial convention, which was held there for the first time since before the pandemic. Their visit coincided with major developments in the country’s twin crises: The Knesset advanced the judicial reform legislation, and three people were killed in a Palestinian shooting and subsequent settler riot in the West Bank.
In a sign of the balancing act that American rabbis are navigating, the Reform movement’s leader, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, who has been among the earliest and most outspoken critics of the new Israeli government, will also be a featured speaker at Amplify Israel’s conference this May aiming to encourage Zionist sentiment among Reform Jews.
At the convention, the leader of the Central Conference of American Rabbis called for Reform clergy to move away from defining Israel in stark black-and-white terms — an apparent reference to Jews who speak of “pro-Israel” and “anti-Israel” forces.
“In order to connect better with those in our communities around Israel in a nuanced and meaningful way, we must be able to move beyond the pro/con dichotomy which only serves to divide us in ways that are a distraction to the actual issues at hand,” Rabbi Hara Person told the attendees. During the conference, the rabbis attended and voiced support for Israeli protests against their government.
“We are seeing a shift for the better, in my opinion, about how Jews are feeling comfortable critiquing Israel’s policies,” Rabbi Sarah Brammer-Shlay told JTA last fall, before the Israeli elections. Brammer-Shlay was a signer of the 2021 rabbinical students’ letter who graduated from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and today is a rabbi and chaplain at Grinnell College.
That kind of shift has Weinblatt worried. “Sometimes, rabbis are actually out of sync and out of touch with their congregations, who do want to hear messages of support of Israel,” he said.
That may well be the case, particularly at synagogues with aging populations, but survey data suggests that American Jews are moving to the left on Israel at the same time that Israel itself has shifted to the right. The most recent Pew Research Center survey of American Jews, in 2021, found that most have a negative opinion of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; only one-third think Israel is making a sincere effort to achieve peace with Palestinians; and 10% support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement against Israel.
While rabbis typically consider what they think their congregants want to hear, they aren’t bound to say it. And some rabbis say this moment is a time to take a stand, even if there is blowback.
Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky of Congregation Ansche Chesed, a Conservative congregation on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, announced in December that his congregation would no longer recite the Prayer for the State of Israel, part of most congregations’ Shabbat morning liturgy since 1948. He said the extremism of Israel’s leadership meant the words no longer applied, and replaced the prayer with the more generally worded Prayer for Peace in Jerusalem.
”I couldn’t just say, ‘God, please guide our leaders well,’” Kalmanofsky said, pointing specifically to the fact that extremist politicians Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich were now government ministers who would be the beneficiaries of such prayer. “The things that they’re saying cannot possibly represent the Israel that I want to support.”
Kalmanofsky had not previously been outspoken as a critic of Israeli policy. He said he has faced some tough feedback from some in his community, including from those who believe this is a moment that demands more, not less, prayer for Israel — “not an unreasonable response,” he said. But a month into the liturgy change, he said he is confident he has made the right decision.
“Something really meaningful had changed in the public life of the state of Israel,” he said. “That deserved real recognition, and a real response.”
Continuing to focus on preserving a Jewish connection with Israel without “dealing like grown-ups” with its “very serious problems” would render the rabbinical voice irrelevant, Kalmanofsky said. “At best, we’re kind of like, ‘blind love, blind loyalty.’ And at worst, we’re totally obtuse, and have nothing meaningful to say about the real world.”
“If you’re going to have a pulpit,” Kalmanofsky added, “you’re going to have to use it once in a while.”
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Yiddish life in prewar Eastern Europe comes alive on this website
On a quiet corner of the internet, a new website asks us to listen.
That site — “https://www.yiddishculture.co/” — is more than a digital exhibit; it’s an act of cultural restitution. Each page restores the sound, movement and texture of Jewish life that once animated the streets of Poland and Lithuania, before silence fell.
Yiddishculture.co. is the latest project by sociologist and educator Adina Cimet, founder of the Educational Program on Yiddish Culture (EPYC). The site opens with a single, evocative idea: that language is not only speech, but atmosphere.
“The goal,” she told me, “is to make the world in which Yiddish lived visible again — its humor, its music, its human geography.” Through layered maps, archival photographs and classroom modules, EPYC transforms the abstraction of Eastern European Jewry into a living landscape of shtet, shtetlekh un derfer — cities, towns and villages.
A map of memory
At first glance, the site’s interface feels deceptively simple: a rotating globe dotted with the names Vilna, Lublin, Lodz, Kuzmir and Czernica. Click on any of them, and the screen opens on an illustrated panorama — markets alive with movement, children’s schools, synagogue facades and Yiddish signs appearing quietly amid the rhythm of Jewish life. The pages are not static memorials, but invitations to explore.
For Cimet, who has spent decades teaching Yiddish language and culture to younger generations at YIVO, this project grew out of her frustration with what she calls the “flattening” of Jewish Eastern Europe. “When people say the shtetl,” she said, “they imagine one homogenous place. But there were many shtetlekh, each with its own accent, customs and political life. I wanted to restore that diversity.”
The culture of a people, not a relic
The site’s culture section expands that vision. In elegant bilingual typography — Yiddish and English — the reader encounters the interwoven strands of Jewish civilization: Language, religion, food, political life, Shoah. Each topic reveals vivid artifacts and explanatory essays. A 1930s cookbook, for example, reveals how “the Jewish kitchen was a bridge between faith and economy.” Political cartoons appear beside essays that trace the tensions between Bundist, Zionist and religious ideologies.
“The famous linguist Max Weinreich called Yiddish a ‘fusion language,’” one caption notes. “But fusion is not confusion — it’s creativity.” The site seems to take that statement as a guiding principle: Yiddish as an adaptive art of survival, where humor and holiness share the same breath.
Teaching the future to hear the past
“We’re not trying to resurrect the past,” Cimet told me, “but to help students inhabit its worldview — to see what those people saw, to feel how they felt about language and belonging.” The project is structured for educators, with lesson plans and cultural modules designed for middle and high school classrooms. Teachers can build units around geography, literature or history, while students trace Yiddish culture’s evolution from market stalls to modern universities.
What makes “When These Streets Heard Yiddish” so moving is that it resists both sentimentality and detachment. It speaks to the generation that grew up hearing their grandparents’ Yiddish mixed with English or Hebrew, only half-understanding its cadences. Here, those cadences are given back — paired with images, texts, and sounds that reanimate them. The result is part museum, part curriculum, part memorial and wholly alive.
Memory as education
EPYC’s design quietly models an educational philosophy that feels deeply Jewish: learning as remembrance, remembrance as responsibility. The Shoah section concludes with a simple line:“The Jews of Poland were not strangers to the winds of war” and a photo of deported children walking away from the camera. Yet even here, the tone is not only tragic. The placement within the broader framework of language, food and song reminds the reader that destruction came after centuries of creativity.
Cimet, who worked with YIVO and taught for decades in Mexico before moving to the United States, understands that digital space is now where memory must live. “If we can’t walk these streets anymore,” she said, “we can at least hear them. And by hearing, begin to imagine again.”
The post Yiddish life in prewar Eastern Europe comes alive on this website appeared first on The Forward.
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Bernie Sanders downplays Graham Platner’s Nazi tattoo: ‘There might be one or two more important issues’
After Graham Platner, the progressive Senate hopeful running in Maine’s Democratic primary, revealed this week that he had had a Nazi-inspired tattoo on his chest for nearly two decades, several of his allies on the left cut him loose.
One who hasn’t: Vermont’s Jewish senator, Bernie Sanders.
“I’m not overly impressed by a squad of media running around saying, ‘What do you think about the tattoo on Graham Platner’s chest?’” the elder statesman of the progressive movement told Axios this week. “Between you and me, there might be one or two more important issues.”
Sanders also said he “absolutely” stood by his endorsement of Platner. Axios plans to air its full interview with Sanders on Friday but released snippets of the conversation on social media.
Sanders has backed Platner, a Marine veteran and oyster farmer, since soon after the latter announced his Senate bid this August. Platner’s anti-establishment platform, which includes embracing many progressive policies Sanders helped popularize, had made him a rising star despite his lack of any political experience. Platner has also taken a hard line against Israel.
That popularity was shaken following the recent revelation of Platner’s old Reddit posts, in which he made comments disparaging various groups. In an effort to get ahead of the opposition, Platner then himself revealed that he sported a skull-and-crossbones chest tattoo resembling an S.S. Totenkopf. He said he paid for it in 2007 while “inebriated” with fellow Marines in Croatia, and claimed he hadn’t known it was affiliated with Nazis (though subsequent reporting has suggested he knew it was a Totenkopf).
“I’m not a secret Nazi,” Platner said on Monday. He initially did not apologize for or suggest he would remove the tattoo.
After the revelations, Sanders told Axios he was still “impressed by the guy.”
“He went through some very difficult experiences in the military as a machine gunner, seeing his friends killed, came out of the military, he will acknowledge, I’m not telling you what he doesn’t say, he had PTSD,” the senator said. “He went into a dark period in his life. I suspect that Graham Platner is not the only American to have gone through a dark period.”
Sanders then sought to draw a line between condemnation of Platner and the election of President Donald Trump. “I think as a nation, especially given the fact that we have a president who was convicted on 14 felonies, maybe we have to do a little bit of forgiveness,” he said.
He wasn’t the only prominent progressive Jew who has remained in Platner’s corner since the tattoo revelation. Jon Lovett, the co-founder of influential left-wing podcast “Pod Save America” and media company Crooked Media and a former Obama official, has accused Platner’s progressive critics of demanding “only perfect candidates off the Harvard Law conveyor belt.” (Platner revealed his Nazi tattoo on a “Pod Save America” episode.)
“Of course he SHOULD answer for that tattoo,” Lovett wrote in a follow-up post on X Wednesday. “He’s explained the story, how it wasn’t flagged as a hate symbol when he entered the army or when he received a security clearance. He’s apologized and covered it up. Maybe it’s not enough. Maybe you don’t believe him.”
Following pushback, Platner did cover up the tattoo with a different design he referred to as a “Celtic knot with some imagery around dogs.”
In a post and video he posted to social media Wednesday, the candidate lifted his shirt to reveal his new tattoo and expressed regret that the old one might have invited comparisons to Nazis.
“It’s come to my attention that it has a stark resemblance to a symbol that is used by neo-Nazis, and I want to say, that was not my intent at all. And the idea that I was going around with something like that utterly horrifies me,” Platner said. “I know that symbols like this can be incredibly damaging to people, and the idea that I had it all these years and it could have been read like that is incredibly troubling.”
He added, “I have lived a life dedicated to antifascism, antiracism and anti-Nazism. I think that racism and antisemitism are a long scourge on our society and a long scourge on our politics, and I think it has no place in our world.”
Platner quickly pivoted, accusing “the establishment” of trying to destroy his movement with distractions.
“Every second we spend talking about a tattoo I got in the Marine Corps is a second that we don’t talk about Medicare for All, it’s a second we don’t talk about raising taxes on the wealthy,” he said.
Another prominent Jewish senator, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, responded to the revelations about Platner’s tattoo by making an endorsement in the race, which he had until this week avoided. He is backing Janet Mills, Maine’s former governor, saying she “is the best candidate to retire Susan Collins.”
A recent poll, conducted just before the tattoo revelations, found that Platner holds a wide lead over Mills among Democratic voters.
Platner’s opponents have started to riff on the controversy, as well: Jordan Wood, a former congressional aide also running in the primary, posted on social media to “fess up” that he, too, has a tattoo — of the symbol of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. “I got this tattoo a few years ago as a reminder of what hope and a positive vision can do in our politics,” he said on Instagram. Adding a dig at Platner, he concluded, “And yes, I knew what it was when I got it.”
A defiant Platner has pledged to remain in the race. At a rally Wednesday evening in Ogunquit, he again said he hadn’t known the meaning behind his tattoo.
He added, “If they thought this was going to scare me off, if they thought that ripping my life to pieces, trying to destroy me, was going to make me think that I shouldn’t have undertaken this project, they clearly have not spent a lot of time around Marines.”
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Bob Vylan Reschedules UK Gigs Amid ‘Political Pressure’ After ‘Death to the IDF,’ Other ‘Antisemitic’ Comments
Bob Vylan music duo performance at Glastonbury Festival (Source: FLIKR)
The British punk rap duo Bob Vylan announced on Thursday the rescheduling of two shows in Manchester and Leeds in the United Kingdom “due to political pressure” from government officials, Members of Parliament, and Jewish groups.
The concerts were scheduled to be the first of their “We Won’t Go Quietly” UK and Ireland tour. The London-based band was set to perform at the O2 Academy in Leeds on Nov. 4 and the following night at Manchester Academy, which is located on the campus of the University of Manchester. The shows in Manchester and Leeds will now take place on Feb. 5 and 7, respectively. Tickets purchased for the original dates will be valid for the rescheduled shows.
Bob Vylan shared on Instagram an updated tour poster, featuring the new dates, and wrote in the caption that the “political pressure” to move the shows stemmed from “the likes of Bridget Phillipson and groups in the Northwest of England.” Phillipson is the UK ‘s education secretary and minister for women and equalities. During a guest appearance earlier this month on a BBC morning talk show, Phillipson was asked if she thinks Manchester Academy should cancel Bob Vylan’s concert on Nov. 5 because of some of the band’s controversial and offensive comments.
The duo’s lead singer, Pascal Robinson-Foster, led chants of “death, death to the IDF,” referring to the Israel Defense Forces,” and “Free, free Palestine,” during Bob Vylan’s Glastonbury set in June, which was broadcast live on the BBC. Robinson-Foster, who goes by the stage name Bobby Vylan, has led chants of “death to the IDF” at other concerts as well following Glastonbury. He talked about the chant during a podcast interview on Tuesday, saying he is “not regretful of it at all” and that he “would do it again tomorrow, [and] twice on Sundays.”
Phillipson said she was “deeply, deeply troubled” by Bob Vylan’s past comments and believes the punk rap duo’s remarks on stage could cause “fear and intimidation.” She added that universities, like the University of Manchester, “have powers to take action to prevent harassment and intimidation.”
During a September concert in Amsterdam, Robinson-Foster called for violence against Zionists while calling conservative activist and pro-Israel advocate Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot the prior week in Utah, “an absolute piece of s–t of a human being.”
“F–k the fascists, f–k the Zionists, get out there and fight there, get out there and meet them in the streets, get out there and let them know that you do not f–king stand by them, you understand me?” the singer shouted.
A separate Bob Vylan concert in the Netherlands was canceled because of the singer’s remarks about Kirk and Phillipson told the British LBC radio station recently that the comments about Zionists are “chilling,” as well as “absolutely disgusting and shameful.”
Manchester Academy is operated by the University of Manchester Students’ Union. In a released statement on Thursday, the student group said the decision to postpone the Nov. 5 concert until February was made following conversations with promoters and Bob Vylan’s management.
“The Manchester performance has been the subject of deep and understandable public scrutiny, given it’s during a difficult time for our city, following the horrific terror attack on the Heaton Park Synagogue,” the student union said, referring to the deadly attack that took place on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. It added that Manchester Academy is still committed “to providing space for creative and cultural expression” and that freedom of artistic expression “is a cornerstone of a democratic society, and it must be protected.”
“Music and culture have always been spaces where protest, dialogue, and difference can exist safely and respectfully,” the statement read in conclusion. “Everyone is and always has been welcome in our spaces. We support thousands of students and the Manchester community from every background each year to find their voice and place.”
The Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester (JRC) sent a letter, supported by 10 members of Parliament, to Manchester Academy demanding that the venue cancel the punk-rap show, and made the same request in statements shared online. JRC explained that Bob Vylan has “repeatedly engaged in rhetoric that crosses the line from legitimate political discourse into antisemitism and incitement,” and said the venue must “cancel the performance and commit to clear policies to ensure that it will not legitimize prejudice under the guise of freedom of speech.”
Further concerts as part of the “We Won’t Go Quietly” tour are scheduled in Glasgow, London, Bristol, Dublin, and Birmingham throughout November and into early December. Bob Vylan said on Thursday that all of those shows will continue “as planned,” with the Bristol and Dublin shows being sold out. The “last few tickets” are on sale for the London gig.
Bob Vylan is also scheduled to perform on Dec. 2 in Brussels, but the European Jewish Congress is calling for the cancellation of the gig because “the event risks providing a platform for rhetoric that incites violence and fuels a surge of hostility toward Jewish communities.”
“We call on the concert organizers and Belgian authorities to review the decision to host this act,” the EJC said on Thursday in a statement shared on X. “The safety and dignity of Jewish individuals and all attendees must be safeguarded. There is no place in Europe for ‘art’ that glorifies violence.”
Several British MPs as well as BBC Director-General Tim Davie condemned Bob Vylan’s “Death to the IDF” comments following the band’s Glastonbury set. Because of the Glastonbury incident, Bob Vylan had their US visas revoked, ahead of scheduled shows in October, and are currently under criminal investigation in the UK. The duo was also dropped from Manchester’s Radar festival in July.
Bob Vylan has defended the Glastonbury “Death to the IDF” comments several times. Robinson-Foster explained once that he was calling for the “dismantling of a violent military machine” and insisted in a social media post last month “there is nothing antisemitic or criminal about anything I said at Glastonbury.” During a recent guest appearance on a podcast hosted by Louis Theroux, the singer revealed that BBC staff members cheered the duo when they got off the stage at Glastonbury and described the set as “fantastic.”