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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.”
—
The post American rabbis, wrestling with Israel’s behavior, weigh different approaches from the pulpit appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Mamdani Under Fire for Response to Mob Targeting New York City Synagogue
New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani attends a press conference at the Unisphere in the Queens borough of New York City, US, Nov. 5, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kylie Cooper
New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is facing intense criticism from Jewish leaders and pro-Israel advocates after issuing a statement that appeared to legitimize a gathering of demonstrators who called for violence against Jews outside a prominent synagogue on Wednesday night.
The protesters were harassing those attending an event being held by Nefesh B’nefesh, a Zionist organization that helps Jews immigrate to Israel, at Park East Synagogue in Manhattan.
“We don’t want no Zionists here!” the group of roughly 200 anti-Israel activists chanted in intervals while waving the Palestinian flag. “Resistance, you make us proud, take another settler out.”
One protester, addressing the crowd, reportedly proclaimed, “It is our duty to make them think twice before holding these events! We need to make them scared.”
Footage on social media also showed agitators chanting “death to the IDF,” referring to the Israel Defense Forces, as well as “globalize the intifada” and “intifada revolution.” Community figures described the scene as openly threatening and a stark escalation of anti-Jewish hostility in New York City.
Mamdani, who was elected the city’s next mayor earlier this month, issued a statement that “discouraged” the extreme rhetoric used by the protesters on Wednesday night but did not unequivocally condemn the harassment of Jews outside their own house of worship. Mamdani’s office notably also criticized the synagogue, with his team describing the event inside as a “violation of international law,” an allegation apparently referencing Israel’s settlement policies in the West Bank.
“The mayor-elect has discouraged the language used at last night’s protest and will continue to do so,” Mamdani spokesperson Dora Pekec said in a statement on Thursday. “He believes every New Yorker should be free to enter a house of worship without intimidation, and that these sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.”
Jewish leaders reacted with disappointment, arguing that Mamdani effectively provided political justification for a protest that targeted Jews for participating in a mainstream, fully legal pro-Israel program. Critics said the state assemblymember’s framing implied that the synagogue’s event, not the threatening chants outside, was the real problem, a position they described as deeply irresponsible amid rising antisemitism in the city.
“Do they think this is clever? Telling Jews not to use synagogues to inform fellow Jews about how to move to Israel, which many Jews consider a commandment, because Jews living in Israel violates international law,” wrote Tal Fortgang of the Manhattan Institute.
Mark Goldfeder of the National Jewish Advocacy Center suggested that Mamdani is failing to secure the safety of all New Yorkers.
“You are already failing on your commitment to protect all New Yorkers. An event to celebrate aliyah is not a violation of international law; it is a protected First Amendment right,” he wrote, referencing the process by which Jews immigrate to Israel.
The World Jewish Congress said the protests “produced scenes early [sic] reminiscent of Kristallnacht,” the infamous Nazi pogroms of November 1938 that terrorized the German Jewish community.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), who endorsed Mamdani for mayor, strongly condemned the protests.
“No New Yorker should be intimidated or harassed at their house of worship,” Hochul posted. “What happened last night at [Park East Synagogue] was shameful and a blatant attack on the Jewish community.”
Pro-Israel advocates warned that Mamdani’s response normalizes intimidation of Jewish communities and shifts blame onto victims rather than confronting extremist activists. They also noted that support for making aliyah is a core part of Jewish communal life and expressed concern that an elected official would characterize such programming as grounds for protest, especially one marked by calls for violence.
The controversy has heightened tensions in New York’s Jewish community, with many observers calling Mamdani’s remarks a troubling signal that anti-Israel animus is increasingly being used to rationalize hostility toward Jewish religious spaces themselves.
Mamdani’s political ascendance comes amid a spike in anti-Jewish hate crimes within New York City.
The city has been ravaged by a surge in antisemitic incidents since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel. According to police data, Jews were targeted in the majority of hate crimes perpetrated in New York City last year. Meanwhile, pro-Hamas activists have held raucous — and sometimes violent — protests on the city’s college campuses, oftentimes causing Jewish students to fear for their safety.
Mamdani, a far-left democratic socialist and anti-Zionist, is an avid supporter of boycotting all Israeli-tied entities who has been widely accused of promoting antisemitic rhetoric. He has repeatedly accused Israel of “apartheid” and “genocide”; refused to recognize the country’s right to exist as a Jewish state; and refused to explicitly condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which has been associated with calls for violence against Jews and Israelis worldwide.
Leading members of the Jewish community in New York have expressed alarm about Mamdani’s victory, fearing what may come in a city already experiencing a surge in antisemitic hate crimes.
A recently released Sienna Research Institute poll revealed that a whopping 72 percent of Jewish New Yorkers believe that Mamdani will be “bad” for the city. A mere 18 percent hold a favorable view of Mamdani. Conversely, 67 percent view him unfavorably.
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Jewish group revives religious charter school fight in Oklahoma, months after test case stalled at Supreme Court
(JTA) — Months after a Supreme Court deadlock blocked an attempt by a Catholic church to create the nation’s first openly religious, publicly funded charter school, a Jewish group is now advancing a similar plan — one designed to sidestep the legal obstacles that doomed the first case.
The National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation has notified an Oklahoma state board that it intends to apply for a statewide virtual high school integrating Oklahoma academic standards with daily Jewish religious studies.
Local Jewish leaders say they were blindsided by the proposal and argue that such a school isn’t needed. But getting approval is not what the applicants are expecting.
Instead, the group’s legal team — led by Becket, a prominent nonprofit religious-liberty law firm — is preparing for the state board to reject the application, setting the stage for a federal lawsuit and, potentially, a precedent-setting ruling at the Supreme Court.
Anticipating that the application will likely be denied, “we would represent Ben Gamla challenging that decision in the federal courts in Oklahoma,” Eric Baxter, a vice president and general counsel at Becket, said in an interview.
Baxter said Ben Gamla expects to submit the application by the end of the year.
The resulting case could become the next major test of whether the Constitution permits government funding to establish religious charter schools. It would resolve a question the Supreme Court failed to decide when it deadlocked 4-4 last spring in the Catholic case, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the case, reportedly because of her longstanding personal and professional ties to a Notre Dame law professor who had advised the petitioner in its early stages.
St. Isidore, backed by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa, focused on school funding but it came amid a broader effort led by conservatives to weaken the legal doctrine of church-state separation. While many of the largest Jewish groups — including the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Union for Reform Judaism — have long championed a strictly secular public sphere as a safeguard for minorities, an increasingly vocal contingent has advocated for greater public funding for private Jewish day schools.
One of the most prominent opponents of public funding for religious education is Rachel Laser, a former leader in Reform Judaism who now heads Americans United for Separation of Church and State. She argues that efforts to erode church-state deportation ultimately serve to advance the domination of Christianity in government.
“As a Jew and the leader of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, I feel obligated to point out that such a case would be using Jews to advance a Christian Nationalist agenda that is not ultimately in Jews’ best interest,” Laser said.
The Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board approved the St. Isidore school in 2023, prompting immediate litigation led by the state attorney general, who argued that a religious charter school was unconstitutional.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court agreed, ruling that charter schools are “state actors” required to remain secular. The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which seemed poised, based on the conservative composition of the court and the oral arguments preceding the ruling, to consider overturning longstanding limits on taxpayer-funded religious schooling.
But in May, the justices deadlocked, and the tie allowed the Oklahoma ruling to stand.
Now Ben Gamla, backed by a former Democrat congressman, aims to resurrect the issue, using a new legal pathway. The group will not sue in state court, bypassing the state Supreme Court ruling against St. Isidore, but in federal court, where they believe they will prevail.
By framing Oklahoma’s refusal as a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Free Exercise Clause, Ben Gamla hopes to build on recent Supreme Court rulings holding that states may not exclude religious organizations from generally available public benefits solely because they are religious.
“The school should be allowed there under existing Supreme Court precedent,” Baxter said. “The court has already previously ruled that in ways that make it clear it cannot exclude a charter school just because it’s religious.”
Ben Gamla is a newly formed Oklahoma nonprofit led by former Democratic congressman Peter Deutsch, who surprised many by endorsing Trump in 2024, citing his stances on Israel and education policy.
Deutsch previously founded a network of Hebrew-English charter schools in Florida with the aim of combating Jewish assimilation, though those schools, unlike the Oklahoma proposal, were required to operate as strictly secular institutions.
His aspirations led Deutsch to look beyond Florida — including to Oklahoma. After St. Isidore was initially approved in 2023, he traveled to the state and explored applying for a Jewish charter school of his own, telling JTA last February that the Catholic effort could be “a paradigm shift for American Jews.”
But he said that after speaking with local rabbis and parents, he decided the state’s Jewish community was too small to sustain such a brick-and-mortar school. The proposal for a virtual Ben Gamla school marks a shift: Whatever the local demand, the project is now positioned as a legal vehicle to test the constitutional question nationwide.
Deutsch declined to be interviewed for this story, directing all questions to Becket.
According to its letter of intent, filed Nov. 3 with Oklahoma’s charter board, the proposed Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School would operate as a statewide virtual high school for grades 9-12 and open with roughly 40 students in the 2026-27 school year. The school plans to offer daily courses in Jewish texts, practices, ethics and other forms of religious study.
The school would deliver “Oklahoma’s state-approved academic standards alongside Jewish religious studies, enabling students to achieve college readiness while developing deep Jewish knowledge, faith, and values within a supportive learning community,” the letter says.
The founding team includes Brett Farley, the executive director of the Catholic Conference of Oklahoma and a former St. Isidore board member.
The new proposal immediately triggered a response from Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which had led litigation against St. Isidore.
Last week, the organization announced that it had filed Oklahoma Open Records Act requests seeking all communications between the state charter board and Ben Gamla. Americans United argues the proposed school is unconstitutional.
“Despite their loss earlier this year in the U.S. Supreme Court, religious extremists once again are trying to undermine our country’s promise of church-state separation by forcing Oklahoma taxpayers to fund a religious public school. Not on our watch,” Laser, the president of Americans United, said in a statement.
Within the Jewish community, the Ben Gamla plan lands in the middle of longstanding divisions over public funding for Jewish religious education.
Orthodox-affiliated organizations, including the Orthodox Union and its affiliated Teach Coalition, have supported efforts to loosen restrictions, arguing that Jews should not be penalized for choosing religious schooling. Several conservative Jewish groups backed St. Isidore’s Supreme Court petition.
Deutsch supports lowering the wall between church and state, at least when it comes to education funding, citing low levels of Jewish knowledge and rising assimilation among American Jews.
“If you think Jewish peoplehood and faith have value in terms of continuity, looking at American Jews today and saying that’s a success story today is absurd,” he told JTA in February. “Clearly, Jewish individuals have done extraordinarily well, but the Jewish community is in a death spiral. The only way to prevent what’s happening is through education.”
In Oklahoma, where the Jewish population is estimated at fewer than 9,000 people, the proposal has drawn skepticism from local Jewish leaders — including those who say they first learned about it not from organizers, but from reporters.
Rabbi Daniel Kaiman, who leads Congregation B’nai Emunah in Tulsa, said he was surprised to discover that an application was being pursued “in the name of the Jewish community” even though, he said, no one he is aware of in the community had been consulted.
“I was surprised to be learning about it through a reporter,” he said. “When I called around to other Jewish leaders in Tulsa and Oklahoma City, none of us knew anything about it.”
Kaiman said he opposes the proposal and worries about the implications of a national legal campaign being waged through a tiny Jewish community that has to manage delicate relationships with state officials and interfaith partners.
“As a Jewish community in Oklahoma, we are an extreme minority,” he said. “I don’t know if this is the type of political attention our Jewish community would have asked for — and I wasn’t asked. Anything that could threaten the key relationships we have with our neighbors and with state leadership is something we need to think about very carefully.”
He added that he is uneasy about being thrust into a public debate that pits one Jewish group against another.
“I don’t love the fact that this forces me to be speaking, even potentially, in opposition to another Jewish group,” he said. “That doesn’t feel very good.”
Kaiman also questioned the underlying practicality of a Jewish charter school in a state with such a small Jewish population, and noted that existing Jewish educational institutions — including a day school, preschools and synagogue-based programs — already meet the community’s needs.
The local Jewish community is tight-knit and exceptionally charitable, a dynamic shaped in part by local oil and gas wealth that has given it an outsized impact on the wider Jewish world through philanthropies.
“We have robust educational offerings for Jewish kids in Oklahoma,” Kaiman said. “I don’t know who this new proposal is for.”
Still, he was careful to leave space for ongoing conversation within the community.
“We really value Jewish education, and maybe this is a good idea,” he said. “But it’s hard to learn about it through public discourse alone. Partnership and conversation would be a better way forward.”
The post Jewish group revives religious charter school fight in Oklahoma, months after test case stalled at Supreme Court appeared first on The Forward.
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As young Jews are move away from Israel, Jewish leaders are reluctant to change their approach
Washington, D.C. — Anna Langer stood behind the podium earlier this week at one of the largest gatherings of Jewish professionals in the world and laid out hard facts of the relationship between American Jews and Israel. Her most striking point: That younger Jews are more than twice as likely to identify as anti-Zionist than the overall population.
“It’s a growing segment of our young people, and it’s an area we must pay attention to,” said Langer, who runs domestic Israel strategy for the Jewish Federations of North America; JFNA helps direct hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for Jewish programming and organizes the annual conference.
From the event’s main stage, Rahm Emmanuel warned that the Israel-Hamas war had battered the country’s reputation among a generation of young American Jews in the same way that the Six Day War in 1967 had invigorated their parents’ support of Israel. “We have our work cut out,” Emmanuel said.
But despite broad concern that many young Jews are abandoning Israel, few of the experts and organizations at the event seemed open to changing much of anything about their approach in order to reach these disaffected members of the community. Instead, the solutions proposed by Jewish educators and philanthropists involved doubling down on existing strategies: cultivating warm feelings toward Israel through more sponsored trips and education, while dismantling the forces — including social media and teachers unions — that they believe are causing young Jews to sour on the country.
“It’s very easy to slide into anti-Zionism.”
Sara HurwitzAuthor of As a Jew
“TikTok is just smashing our young people’s brains all day long with videos of carnage in Gaza,” Sara Hurwitz, Michele Obama’s former speechwriter who has written two books about Jewish identity, told the audience of some 2,000 Jewish professionals. “This is why so many of us can’t have a sane conversation with younger Jews.”
Eric Fingerhut, the head of JFNA, said that two of his organization’s top priorities were facilitating the sale of TikTok to Larry Ellison, the pro-Israel tech mogul who owns Oracle, and countering the influence of the National Education Association, a teachers union that has expressed hostility toward Israel.
“This is a technology coming from outside this country,” Fingerhut said, referring to TikTok’s Chinese ownership. He added that antisemitism and criticism of Israel on social media was “a global attack on Jewish people and the State of Israel, funded with billions and billions — probably trillions — of dollars, fueled by some of the most sophisticated algorithms.”
(A spokesperson clarified in a text message that he was referring to online influence and disinformation campaigns from China, Russia and Iran.)
Another frequent refrain at the conference was that the real solution to communal divisions was a stronger commitment to what Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, described as “Jewish education, Zionist identity and Torah learning.”
“These are the essential elements of a healthy constitution for our community,” he said.
Hurwitz, too, suggested that young Jews were drifting from Israel because their Jewish identities had been reduced to “a big empty void.”
“Young people who have that empty Jewish identity today — it is being filled by antisemitism,” she said. “It’s very easy to slide into anti-Zionism.”
***
On the sidelines of the conference, however, some attendees acknowledged that the belief young Jews critical of Israel were simply devoid of a meaningful Jewish identity overlooked some of the reality. Young Jews remain both supportive of a Jewish state in Israel and emotionally attached to the country. Despite reporting deep levels of discomfort with Israel’s actions, they have joined the “surge” of Jewish engagement that followed the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack in Israel, showing up in increased numbers to synagogues and Jewish events.
“Disengagement is not our problem,” Langer, the JFNA executive, told a group assembled to discuss the future of Israel education. “Rather, it’s our ability to hold space for complexity and cultivate belonging in a deeply connected — and yet deeply divided — community.”
She pointed to statistics that showed half of American Jews believe the community does not allow for nuanced conversations about the war in Gaza. And nearly 70% found it hard to support actions taken by the Israeli government, even though only 7% of Jews report avoiding communal institutions over these concerns.
Langer said the research suggested Israel education needed to feature more nuance: “When students perceive their education as one-sided or incomplete, it undermines their trust and engagement.”
Jon Falk, vice president of Israel engagement and antisemitism for Hillel International, said his organization had brought Palestinian speakers to its chapters to help address this desire. “I believe that Hillel brings more Palestinian voices to campus than even SJP,” Falk said, referring to Students for Justice in Palestine.
But despite acknowledging that young Jews are deeply uncomfortable with Israel — around 65% of Jews under 40 say that Israel’s actions often conflict with their moral, political and Jewish values, according to data presented at the conference — there was no suggestion that Jewish organizations should move away from ironclad support for Israel.
One sticking point may be that, according to Langer, when you consider American Jews of all ages, they are evenly divided over whether communal institutions should be more supportive or more critical of Israel. And many young Jews continue to have a positive relationship with Israel.
“It sounds wonderful to say that we should be a community and serve everyone,” said David Cygielman, the CEO of Mem Global, which runs a network of group houses for young Jews. “But how does that play out? And does that alienate people who are coming to be part of a strong, vibrant Jewish community who love and want to engage with Israel?”
The reluctance of experts who spoke at the conference to consider shifting their Israel strategy was underscored by the absence of liberal pro-Israel groups at the event. J Street was not represented at the conference, nor was the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, one of the most progressive Jewish establishment organizations, which for decades maintained a formal relationship with the federation network.
As for how attendees who were there positioned themselves politically, they overwhelmingly sided with John Podhoretz, a conservative journalist who argued against the feasibility of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during a mainstage debate.
And when Greenblatt was asked gently about divisions within the Jewish community over how to fight antisemitism, including criticism of the ADL’s recent announcement that it was creating a Mamdani Monitor to track the new, and Muslim, mayor of New York City, he expressed confidence that his organization had taken the correct approach.
“I am a ferocious and unapologetic Zionist,” Greenblatt said. “Anyone who wants me to apologize: Get in line.”
***
One strategy experts did, repeatedly, endorse included travel to Israel, which plummeted following the Covid-19 pandemic, as a solution to eroding support for the country among both Jews and non-Jews, even as they acknowledged that participating in those kinds of trips now came with “a lot of social isolation and punishment” for participants.
“Imagine if every federation across North America took 100 public school educators and administrations to Israel every year,” said Jenna Potash, an executive at UJA-Federation of Toronto. “That’s really something we should focus on.”
And on the rare occasion that speakers did make allowances for criticizing Israel, many suggested that those discussions take place only in private.
“You need to lead with proud support for Israel, standing publicly and legislatively with Israel in unmatched times of vilification,” Langer said. “At the same time, we need to create internal spaces for honest, nuanced and educational conversations about Israel.”
Yet the bulk of speakers seemed to reject the notion that any consolation was needed for Jews who were uncomfortable with the Jewish establishment’s traditional support for Israel. Mark Charendoff, who runs the influential right-leaning Maimonides Fund, said he was in the process of re-calibrating the organization’s focus to fighting the enemies of the Jewish people, after years focusing on reaching young Jews.
Charendoff said this new strategy means building alliances with people who “we might disagree with on 80%” so long as “we agree with them on Israel.”
“Our enemies are trying to normalize anti-Zionism,” Charendoff said. “We have to re-normalize Israel as part of the conversation and psyche and ethos of American Jewry.”
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