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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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Watch: The cattle farmer building a synagogue in a cornfield
For the past year and a half, we’ve followed Nik Jakobs, a third-generation cattle farmer in Sterling, Illinois, who is building a synagogue in a two-acre cornfield. Alongside it, he is also building a museum of tolerance.
Our coverage began when Nik traveled 600 miles to rescue the ark, bimah and stained glass from a closing congregation in Pennsylvania. After we published our first story about the unlikely journey, additional synagogues began donating their own sacred objects, each from a community that could no longer keep them.
Nik, 41, is the grandson of Holocaust survivors, and the museum is his way of teaching the tolerance that saved his family. His grandmother, Edith, was 11 in 1942 when a Lutheran farmer named Willem Drenth offered the family’s home as a hiding place. She was one of 13 Jews who lived in that single room for two years and eight months, with no electricity and no running water. About a hundred villagers knew about the Jews in hiding. No one said a word.
While in hiding, Edith kept busy by learning to knit. She embroidered a cloth, which survived and will now cover the Torah in Nik’s new synagogue.
This spring, Nik and his family traveled to the Netherlands, where the village staged a play about the family in hiding and the Drenths. They watched actors portray their ancestors, and the Christians who kept their family alive.
Edith died this month at 95. Her voice, trained to a whisper in hiding, never regained its full volume. Her story did.
That story is now drawing others in. The Anne Frank House donates one sapling a year, grown from the chestnut tree Anne saw from her attic hiding place. It has chosen the Illinois synagogue and museum to plant its next one. After visiting Anne’s house with his four daughters, Nik put it this way: “Anne’s story ends. My grandmother’s didn’t.”
Nik and his family broke ground on the sanctuary this spring, on land beside a Lutheran church — the same faith as the farmer who saved his family.
If all goes as planned, the doors open in late 2027. They hope the first service will be the bat mitzvah of Nik’s oldest daughter, Taylor. The pews will hold the congregants of the closing synagogues whose ark, Torah and windows helped build the room, there to see their old homes live again.
Catch up on all of our stories about Nik Jakobs.
The post Watch: The cattle farmer building a synagogue in a cornfield appeared first on The Forward.
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In this Florida district, politicians battle over who most loves Israel
(JTA) — BOCA RATON, Fla. — Rep. Jared Moskowitz said that he is “proud to be known as the most pro-Israel Jewish Democrat in Congress” during a synagogue event in one of the country’s most Jewish congressional districts on Tuesday evening.
The comment came during a one-hour candidates’ forum featuring Moskowitz and his Republican challenger, Scott Singer — both Jewish and both wearing kippahs — that largely centered on Israel and got testy at moments.
Moskowitz said he is “proud to have AIPAC’s endorsement” at a moment when the popularity of Israel and the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC has plummeted among Democratic voters amid Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and the war with Iran.
But the crowd at the Reform synagogue Congregation B’nai Israel in Boca Raton was, like Florida’s 25th Congressional District itself, split across party lines, and staunchly pro-Israel.
“This isn’t New York, this isn’t Boston — this is South Florida,” attendee Edward Kone told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Moskowitz had soundly defeated democratic socialist challenger Oliver Larkin, a sharp Israel critic, in August. As Democrats look to take control of the House of Representatives, Florida’s recently redrawn 25th Congressional District — which would have favored Trump by 9 percentage points in 2024 but backed Joe Biden in 2020 under its new boundaries — is being closely watched ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
Despite some tense moments between Moskowitz and Singer, who was Boca Raton’s mayor until earlier this year, the two politicians have been largely aligned on the issue of Israel.
Both have condemned accusations that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. They each oppose any effort to condition or cut off U.S. military aid to Israel. Both supported Israel’s strikes on Iranian facilities in 2025, though Moskowitz has since called for the U.S. to end its war with Iran.
Moskowitz referenced his and Singer’s shared pro-Israel viewpoints on Tuesday during the forum moderated by South Florida Sun Sentinel journalist Anthony Man.
“This is exactly why nothing gets done in Washington. This is exactly why nothing is functioning: Because literally two people who agree on 99% of this stuff want to take this 1% and try to ram it down people’s throats,” Moskowitz said.
Singer, however, made a point of emphasizing where the two candidates differ on Israel. He criticized Moskowitz for voting for the March 2026 war powers resolution in response to the Trump administration ordering strikes on Iran without congressional authorization. While Moskowitz has called for the administration to end the war, Singer argued that the threat of Iran must be thoroughly dealt with. “We have to ensure victory here,” he said.
For siblings Edward and Susan Kone, both Jewish Republican voters who attended the forum, Moskowitz’s record on Israel does not stack up against Singer’s positions. They, too, criticized Moskowitz for voting to end the Iran war, and for his 2023 vote to keep Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar on the Foreign Affairs Committee.
“I’m America first, but Israel is extremely important to me. And on Israel, Jared Moskowitz just doesn’t add up,” Edward Kone said. Omar is among a number of pro-Palestinian Democrats whom Republicans say are leading the party’s left-wing flank in turning it against Israel..
Singer himself blasted Moskowitz for his vote against removing Omar, and tied Moskowitz to the left flank of the Democratic Party.
“The strategy is adjective, verb, Ilhan Omar, I got it. Let’s move onto the next topic,” Moskowitz responded, drawing some groans from the audience.
Others in the room had voted for Moskowitz in previous elections, and said they were likely to do so again, at least in part because of his Israel stance.
“He has a good track record with Israel, and as an American Jew I appreciate that,” said Peter Davidson, an independent who is a member of Congregation B’nai Israel.
Moskowitz pointed to his endorsement from AIPAC and Singer’s lack of an endorsement from Rep. Randy Fine, a fellow Jewish Republican from Florida, as evidence that he is seen as satisfyingly pro-Israel across parts of the political spectrum. He also pointed to a post on X by Jeff Miller, an RJC board member, who wrote that he has “zero interest in tearing down one of the few Democrats left willing to stand unapologetically with America and Israel.”
“They’re staying out,” Moskowitz said. “They’re specifically saying, ‘We’re not going to oppose Jared Moskowitz because of his record fighting antisemitism and fighting for the State of Israel.’”
Singer has the endorsement of the RJC as well as Trump. He admitted during the forum that he had reached out to Fine for an endorsement and was rejected.
Earlier this year, Singer downplayed anti-Israel trends on the right as “a few fringe commentators” who are out of step with Trump. Moskowitz challenged him to name three of those figures: Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and Florida gubernatorial candidate James Fishback.
Singer named all three and said “I gladly, shamelessly condemn” them, but countered that Democrats are voting in anti-Israel voices while Republicans cast theirs aside.
Man also asked Singer about President Donald Trump’s use of the term “Shylock” on Monday, a term that references a character from the play “The Merchant of Venice” which is rooted in an antisemitic trope.
“I think that’s an ill-advised term,” Singer said, before pivoting to praise of Trump and urging the audience to focus on what the president has done for Israel rather than his choice of words..
“‘Merchant of Venice’ happens to be my favorite Shakespeare play. That term has multiple meanings. But let’s look at the real record beyond an offhand comment: No president has been better for the State of Israel than President Trump,” Singer said, drawing applause.
As for the upcoming Israeli elections — which Trump recently weighed in on — Singer told reporters after the event that he was too busy with his own race to make endorsements and does not have a preferred candidate.
“To be candid, I have some awareness of it, but I’m not following it intently,” he said.
Singer’s attacks on Tuesday often focused on Moskowitz’s Democratic Party, which he says will drown out the congressman’s pro-Israel views as it takes its cues from its left-wing flank. He pointed to Moskowitz’s quote from last month, when he said that pro-Israel voices are being “ostracized” in the party.
“It’s great that he says these things, but he’s also voted to empower Ilhan Omar twice,” Singer said. “He’s tried to go along to get along with the Squad, and it’s not working.”
But for some in the crowd, that attack didn’t quite land.
Davidson, an independent, said he is “not a great fan” of the Democratic Party. But for him, Moskowitz is an exception.
“He’s more of an independent thinker,” Davidson said. “Crosses a lot of party lines.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Brad Lander detained by Israeli police in the West Bank while helping Palestinians harvest; dozens of rabbis and activists arrested
Dozens of Israeli and international activists, including U.S. congressional candidate Brad Lander, were detained by Israeli authorities in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday morning while accompanying Palestinian farmers harvesting olives. After Landers was released, the Israeli activists were later placed under arrest, and the foreign citizens were reported to be awaiting interrogation.
The delegation was hours into their work when they were told they were unlawfully inside a closed military zone, according to Anton Goodman, acting CEO of Rabbis for Human Rights. Authorities detained the group even after he agreed they would leave immediately, he said.
Goodman told the Forward that 42 Israeli members of his delegation and another 28 foreign citizens were being held at the police station in nearby Beitar Illit.
“Those of us with Israeli citizenship are being detained outside of the police station,” Goodman said by phone while he was detained. “The foreign passport holders have been separated from us, and I have been told by a senior security officer that they will be interrogated by Army personnel.”
Shorty after speaking to Goodman, Tamar Glezerman, an activist from New York who holds Israeli citizenship, informed the Forward that the detainment had been converted to arrests “because you cannot detain people for more than three hours.” Glezerman also said the foreign citizens had been taken to a military base for interrogation.
According to Goodman, the delegation was helping Palestinians who have faced severe restrictions on access to their land since Oct. 7, 2023, when authorities informed the group that the area had been declared a closed military zone.
“There is no possible way we could have known that this morning,” Goodman said. “And even so, I told them we would respect the decision and leave immediately.
“But that was not good enough for them,” he continued. “I was informed that the entire group was being detained for ‘identification purposes.’”
At the time of the interview, Goodman said, only Lander had been released. The others remained detained, including a Palestinian woman whose family owned the olive grove where the harvest took place. Lander, a progressive Democrat running for Congress this year, has been vocal in his criticism of both settler violence and Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Rabbi Jill Jacobs, CEO of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, also confirmed that she and dozens of other Americans, along with Canadian and British citizens, had been detained, their passports confiscated. They were being taken by bus to the same police station, she said at the time.
“There is a Jewish principle of accompaniment of those in danger,” Jacobs told the Forward. “We were living that out, in contrast to the settlers who justify stealing olives and carrying out violent acts contrary to Jewish law.”
Despite the uncertainty over what would happen to her delegation, Jacobs said they remained in good spirits.
“We are currently on the bus saying divrei Torah and singing niggunim and religious songs,” she said, referring to Torah teachings and wordless melodies.
“It is a sad comment on the current state of Jewish affairs that they are arresting rabbis picking olives, and not the settlers who steal them, poison trees, and violently attack human beings,” Jacobs added.
The detentions follow an especially brutal week in an already escalating wave of settler violence in the West Bank. On Friday, settlers severely beat Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine while she covered the olive harvest in Abu Falah, leaving her with fractured vertebrae and a broken rib. The following day, settlers attacked a delegation of European diplomats and other visitors near Taybeh. Palestinian residents have also faced repeated assaults, with dozens reported injured, several seriously.
Goodman called the mass detention “insane,” criticizing both its scale and the deployment of security forces against volunteers.
“This is the largest mass detainment we have ever seen,” he said. “But it’s not just that. All across the West Bank we have seen a complete deterioration of the rule of law as settler terrorists rampage through Palestinian villages with little consequence or deterrent. Now you have a completely peaceful delegation who are only here to help with the olive harvest and 100 security personnel are dispatched to detain them?
“What a complete and utter waste of public resources.”
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