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Everyone knows about Herzl. Is it time for Max Nordau, the intermarried father of Zionism, to get his due?
(JTA) — In the weeks since Israel’s latest government was sworn in, questions relating to assimilation, defining Jewish identity and what it means to be a Zionist have been central to the public and political discourse, which in some ways is perhaps more heated and divisive than it has ever been.
One useful addition to the discourse might be recalling the thought and example of an author and Zionist leader who died 100 years ago last month. Max Nordau was a central figure in the early years of the modern political Zionist movement, literally founding the Zionist Organization (today’s World Zionist Organization) with Theodor Herzl and heading multiple Zionist congresses. A physician and renowned man of letters prior to his “conversion” to Zionism following the Dreyfus Affair in France, Nordau’s joining the Zionist movement gave it a notable boost in terms of renown and respectability.
He also coined the term “Muscular Judaism” — a redefinition of what it meant to be a Jew in the modern world; a critical shift away from the traditionally insular, “meek” Jewish archetype devoted solely to religious and intellectual pursuits. The “Muscular Jew” in theory and practice was necessary in order for a modern Jewish state to be established.
Reviving interest in Nordau now is a continuation of a conversation that an Israeli historian kicked off four decades ago. The historian, Yosef Nedava, embarked on a crusade to renew interest in and appreciation of Nordau. Nedava was a proponent of Revisionist Zionism, a movement led by Zeev Jabotinsky and later Menachem Begin that was considered to be the bitter ideological rival to the Labor Zionism of David Ben-Gurion and others. Broadly speaking, Revisionist Zionism was more territorially maximalist when it came to settling the Land of Israel, and favored liberal principles as opposed to the socialist ones championed by Ben-Gurion and his colleagues.
Nedava had a penchant for fighting the battles of unsung heroes of history who he thought should be better remembered. He led a crusade to clear the name of Yosef Lishansky, the founder of the NILI underground movement that assisted the British during World War I who was executed by the Ottomans. He also worked to exonerate fellow Revisionist Zionists accused of murdering Labor Zionist leader Haim Arlozorov — an event that shook Mandatory Palestine in the early 1930s and beyond.
About Nordau, Nedava said at the time, “For 60 years he wasn’t mentioned and he was one of the forgotten figures that only a few streets were named after.”
Nedava’s sentiment was clear, even if his words were somewhat hyperbolic. Nordau had in fact been studied and cited over the years, and there were in fact at least a few streets named after him in Israel. At the official state event marking six decades since Nordau’s death, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin even declared, “We never forgot Max Nordau, his teachings and his historical merits.”
Following Nedava’s efforts leading up to the 60th anniversary of Nordau’s death in 1983, Begin set up an official committee to memorialize the Zionist leader. The committee was tasked with publishing Nordau’s works, establishing events and honoring him in other ways like getting his face on a stamp “and maybe on a monetary bill,” according to Nedava.
But no bill was ever printed with Nordau’s visage, and there’s no question that Nordau never has gotten nearly the credit nor recognition that Herzl received. If the streets referenced by Nedava are any indicator, there are currently a respectable 33 streets named after Nordau in Israel, though that’s just about half of what Herzl’s got. There’s a city called Herzliya, with a massive image of the Zionist founder overlooking one of Israel’s most-trafficked highways. Nordau has a beach in Tel Aviv, a neighborhood in Netanya and a small village far in the north — but no city of his own.
Trees line alongside Nordau Avenue in Tel Aviv, March 4, 2017. (Anat Hermoni/FLASH90)
That’s not to say he didn’t have his fans. The Revisionist movement and Begin’s Herut and Likud parties idolized him, often mentioning and depicting him alongside Herzl and Vladimir Jabotinsky. Revisionist historian Benzion Netanyahu, father of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, greatly admired Nordau, even editing four entire volumes of his writings.
“Alongside Herzl, the Revisionists loved him, as he was a liberal. Yet he was also accepted and respected by those on the other side of the political spectrum,” Hezi Amiur, a scholar of Zionism and the curator of the Israeli Collection at the National Library of Israel, told me.
Like many of his generation and ilk, Nordau, himself the son of a rabbi, rejected religion and tradition as a teenager, opting to join mainstream European secular culture. He changed his name from Simon (Simcha) Maximilian Südfeld to Max Nordau. The shift in surname from Südfeld — meaning “southern field” — to Nordau — meaning “northern meadow” — was very much an intentional act for Nordau, the only son in his religiously observant family who chose northern European Germanic culture over the traditions of his fathers. He even married a Danish Protestant opera singer, a widow and mother of four named Anna Dons-Kaufmann.
In a congratulatory letter sent to Nordau following his marriage to Anna, Herzl, who was also not a particularly observant nor learned Jew, wrote:
Your concerns regarding the attitudes of our zealous circles [within the Zionist movement] regarding your mixed marriage are perhaps exaggerated. … If our project had already been fulfilled today, surely we would not have prevented a Jewish citizen, that is, a citizen of the existing Jewish state, from marrying a foreign-born gentile, through this marriage she would become a Jew without paying attention to her religion. If she has children, they will be Jews anyway.
This particular vision of Herzl’s has certainly not come to fruition, and the topic remains a particularly heated one, continuing to roil the Israeli political system, and — no less — Israel-Diaspora relations.
Similar political forces to those that have kept this particular Herzlian vision at bay may have also been responsible for ensuring that Nordau’s impressively whiskered face never made its way onto Israeli currency.
According to one report, Begin’s Likud government abandoned its efforts to get Nordau’s onto a shekel note in 1983 in order to avoid a potential coalition crisis. The concern was that the religious parties that were part of the ruling coalition could become outraged at the prospect of having someone married to a non-Jew on Israeli money. Whether the report was fully accurate or not, the sentiments behind such a potential coalition scare are certainly familiar to anyone following contemporary Israeli politics.
Nonetheless, perhaps the two most influential religious Zionist rabbis of the 20th century, Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaKohen Kook and his son, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda, not only somewhat overlooked Nordau’s assimilationist tendencies and intermarriage, they even celebrated the man and his vision.
The elder Rabbi Kook, who served as the rabbi of Jaffa, Jerusalem and the Land of Israel in the opening decades of the 1900s, uncompromisingly criticized some of Nordau’s views, especially with respect to the separation of religion from Zionism. But he was a big fan of Nordau’s “Muscular Judaism,” writing among other things, that:
…a healthy body is what we need, we have been very busy with the soul, we have forgotten the sanctity of the body, we have neglected physical health and strength, we have forgotten that we have holy flesh, no less than we have the holy spirit… Through the strength of the flesh the weakened soul will be enlightened, the resurrection of the dead in their bodies.
Decades later his son, likely the most influential Israeli religious Zionist spiritual leader until his death in 1982, defined Nordau (as well as seminal Hebrew poet Shaul Tchernichovsky, who also married a non-Jew) as a “baal tshuvah” — a term imprecisely translated as “penitent” that is generally used to refer to non-observant Jews who become more religiously observant. Yehuda based his designation on a Talmudic teaching that “Anyone who transgresses and is ashamed of it is forgiven for all of his sins.”
Like anyone, Max Nordau probably regretted and felt ashamed of various decisions and actions in his life, but marrying a non-Jewish woman does not seem to be one of them. He and Anna stayed married for decades until his death in 1923.
Both Kooks were able to overlook the decidedly non-religious (if not outright anti-religious) life Nordau chose to lead. Instead of his personal choices, they focused on the central contribution he made to ensuring the reestablishment of a Jewish home in its ancestral land.
The majority of Israel’s current ruling coalition claims to be the ideological descendants of Begin and the Rabbis Kook, men who managed to have great admiration for the teachings and achievements of Nordau, even if they may have found his anti-religious, assimilationist tendencies and intermarriage reprehensible. Nedava wanted Israel to learn from Nordau 40 years ago. It’s possible the country still could today — if only the striking level of tolerance and respect with which he was considered in the past can still be summoned.
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Sally Rooney’s publisher stops selling her books in Britain, citing ban on pro-Palestinian group she backs
(JTA) — Sally Rooney’s publisher says it will stop supplying her books in the United Kingdom because current legislation prevents it from passing her earnings on to her.
The best-selling Irish writer, whose work includes the novel “Normal People,” which was adapted into a hit BBC drama, has long been a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause.
Faber said it would no longer supply her books in the United Kingdom because of her backing for Palestine Action, a group that the British government last year proscribed as a terrorist organization, saying it had “orchestrated a nationwide campaign of direct criminal action against businesses and institutions.”
“Current legislation in the UK has led to circumstances where Faber cannot pass on UK earnings to Sally Rooney for her work,” the publisher said.
“To sell a writer’s work and not be able to pass on earnings is an unconscionable situation for a publisher,” it said. “As such, and in full agreement with Sally, we have taken the decision that we can no longer supply her works in the UK in any format. We remain the proud publisher of her remarkable body of work, which we will continue to sell in other territories.”
Faber had no further comment, the statement said.
Yvette Cooper, then the Home Secretary, banned Palestine Action last year following an attack by the group on the Royal Air Force base at Brize Norton which caused millions of pounds of damage. It had previously targeted businesses and premises which it said were linked to Israeli defence companies.
Soon after the announcement, Rooney wrote an opinion piece in the Irish Times in which she doubled down on her support for Palestine Action, adding that she would give the proceeds of her books to back the group. “If this makes me a ‘supporter of terror’ under British law, so be it,” she wrote.
In a statement following the action announced by Faber, Rooney cited her Irish Times opinion piece as she explained that the publication of her books “could now constitute a serious criminal offence.”
The ban of Palestine Action has proven to be highly contentious in Britain. Back in February, the group’s co-founder Huda Ammori challenged the move in the High Court, with Rooney providing a supportive witness statement. She said at the time that she was “almost certain” her work would be dropped in Britain if the ban persisted.
The court ruled in Ammori’s favor, but that decision was overturned by the Court of Appeal in June. The Supreme Court is due to hear an appeal next month.
Rooney said on Wednesday: “After a process of consultation and deliberation, and with my full agreement, my publisher Faber has therefore determined that it can no longer supply my work within the UK.
“I have made every effort to be honest with the public about my beliefs and intentions, and I am wholly prepared to accept the consequences.”
Rooney’s support for the Palestinian cause predates the attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent war in Gaza. In 2021 she declined to sell Hebrew translation rights for her novel “Beautiful World, Where Are You?” to the Israeli publisher that had previously released her books in Hebrew.
At the time, she said she supported the BDS movement and would not work with an Israeli publisher unless it is willing to “publicly distance itself from apartheid and support the U.N.-stipulated rights of the Palestinian people.”
That move prompted backlash in Israel and beyond, including calls to boycott Rooney’s work. Israeli bookstore chains reportedly removed some of her books from shelves.
However, earlier this year she agreed to have her latest novel, “Intermezzo,” published by an Israeli publisher approved by boycott activists.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Trump cheered in video address to Michigan synagogue
(JTA) — SOUTHFIELD, Mich. – President Donald Trump addressed a Michigan synagogue by video Wednesday evening as part of an event orchestrated by Leo Terrell, chair of the administration’s task force for combating antisemitism, and the Zionist Organization of America.
Trump’s greeting, which was prerecorded, was met with applause from the estimated 500 Jews who had come to Congregation Shaarey Zedek in the Detroit suburbs amid a pivotal Senate election in the state that has prompted deep anxieties among its Jewish population.
The president told the crowd that Terrell “speaks for our country” and “speaks for a lot of people, a lot of people that love Israel but really, more than anything else, they don’t want to see false and inaccurate statements made about this horrible subject of antisemitism.”
The event was billed as the first stop on Terrell’s “American Tour Against Hate” and was staged by the U.S. Justice Department, while also serving as a fundraiser and booster for ZOA. Attendees were handed donation forms for ZOA’s Michigan chapter. The organization’s national director, Mort Klein, is close with Terrell and said he intends to participate in all future stops on the tour.
Several other Trump officials, including Terrell and U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, would address the crowd over the course of the night to emphasize the administration’s efforts to combat antisemitism.
(L-r) Leo Terrell, chair of the Trump administration’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, with U.S. Department of Labor official Kenneth Wolfe at an event to combat antisemitism at Congregation Shaarey Zedek in Southfield, Michigan, on Oct. 14, 2026. (Andrew Lapin/JTA)
Kobi Erez, director of ZOA’s Michigan chapter, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency after the event that the evening was designed to be “nonpartisan.”
“It’s a tour against hate, and we can’t choose one side,” Erez said. “We have to fight antisemitism and hate for all.”
He argued that the event was not a ZOA fundraiser in his view, saying that it was free to attend and that the organization was asking for donations mainly to cover security costs.
He also said that the organization had been in touch with the head rabbi of Shaarey Zedek, Aaron Star, to address any concerns about the nature of the event so close to Election Day. “We had to promise Rabbi Starr that we were going to make a disclaimer that Shaarey Zedek doesn’t necessarily represent all the views of the speakers.”
Terrell did make that disclaimer, midway through the two-hour event.
Starr told JTA that there had been a back-and-forth with ZOA over the Trump video due to “a string of miscommunications and some last minute changes over the course of the day.”
Polls have shown that a majority of Jews nationwide have opposed Trump and his policies since his entry on the political scene. Yet recent fears about growing antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment on the left have also alienated many Jews from the Democratic Party.
Some Michigan Jews are preparing to vote for a Republican for the first time over their objections to the Democratic Senate candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, a harsh critic of Israel whose prior remarks on Jewish safety have also upset many in the community.
El-Sayed’s name was not uttered from the stage Wednesday, but the Trump officials on hand took many opportunities to praise their boss’s work on Jewish issues.
“This administration, unlike any other administration, is committed 24/7 to fighting antisemitism,” Terrell told the crowd.
An estimated 500 Michigan Jews applaud Trump administration officials during an event held to address antisemitism at Congregation Shaarey Zedek in Southfield, Michigan, Oct. 14, 2026. (Andrew Lapin/JTA)
The Conservative synagogue was billed online as a “co-sponsor” of the event along with Frankel Jewish Academy, a local Jewish day school. But Starr told JTA, “It wasn’t our event.”
Midway through the program, Terrell stated that Shaarey Zedek “is not sponsoring this event,” adding, “The words of the speakers, mine and others, are theirs alone and are not a representation of this great religious institution.”
Terrell stated that DOJ and ZOA were the sponsors — itself an unusual arrangement between a federal agency and an activist group. Klein told JTA following the event that Terrell had contacted his organization to help organize the tour, and that ZOA “really did all the work.”
U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, who has been criticized for appearing at campaign events and who recently penned a memo loosening restrictions on political activism for senior federal officials, also addressed the crowd in a prerecorded video.
“In recent years, we have seen a disturbing rise in antisemitic rhetoric and acts of hatred against fellow citizens,” Blanche said. “Hate has no place in America, and this Department of Justice remains committed to confronting it wherever it appears.”
Initially billed as a conversation between Terrell and Klein, the event functioned more as an informational session for Jews to learn how their government is responding to antisemitism.
Flyers from the FBI instructed attendees on how to respond to various categories of threat. A roundtable of local and federal law enforcement officials, led by the FBI Detroit office field director who had responded to the terror attack on Temple Israel in the state in March, sought to assure the Jews in attendance that they had their backs.
Terrell also unveiled a just-launched “American Tour Against Hate” app that, he said, would enable its users to take a pledge to fight antisemitism and “report” antisemitic incidents. It wasn’t immediately clear where the reports would be filed to. The Combat Antisemitism Movement, another activist group, was credited for the app on its download page.
Trump administration official Leo Terrell addresses Congregation Shaarey Zedek in Southfield, Michigan, on the first stop of his “American Tour Against Hate,” Oct. 14, 2026. (Andrew Lapin/JTA)
Still, politics seeped in, and much of the crowd seemed happy about it. Klein attacked another anti-Zionist politician, New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, by name in his remarks. He also drew enthusiastic cheers for calling to “fight the open-border policies that we had in the past, which allows unvetted people from countries whose governments and populations overwhelmingly hate Jews.”
Other Jewish speakers alluded to El-Sayed — particularly his initial reaction to the Temple Israel attack, which many Jews believed was equating the attack with Israel’s war in Lebanon. The candidate has since apologized for his initial remarks.
“No conflict overseas can ever justify trying to murder innocent people here at home, and no political candidate should ever excuse terror and hate,” Erez told the crowd.
Later, during an interfaith roundtable, Rabbi Shneur Silberberg of the Bais Chabad Torah Center in West Bloomfield leveled a more direct accusation.
“If you respond differently to a terror attack against a group of Jewish schoolchildren, and your response is any different than it would be to any other group of children, then that’s antisemitism,” Silberberg told the crowd.
During the program, Terrell inveighed against antisemitism with a showman’s flair, often to the delight of the audience, some of whom shouted his name. “News flash: I’m not Jewish. Who cares?” Terrell asked the crowd early on, to laughter and applause. He donned a red hat in the style of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” merchandise, with the lettering instead spelling, “American Tour Against Hate.”
He went after college campuses and K-12 teachers he said were “indoctrinated,” and repeatedly denounced what he called “the Jewish tax,” which he defined as the high security costs the community bears in order to safeguard its houses of worship and other institutions.
Flyers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation laid out on a table during the “American Tour Against Hate,” an event staged by the Trump administration at Congregation Shaarey Zedek in Southfield, Michigan, Oct. 14, 2026. (Andrew Lapin/JTA)
“For you to enjoy your right to walk down the street, to enjoy your synagogue, to go to a Jewish community center, to have your kids walk through their school, you have to pay extra security, millions of dollars,” Terrell said. “That’s going to stop.”
Terrell and Klein plan to meet with the head of Detroit’s Jewish federation as well as with rabbis at Temple Israel during their stay in town, Klein told JTA.
Erez said that Terrell’s visit to Michigan also included meetings with the mother of a Temple Israel preschooler who had been in the building during the March attack, as well as with Jewish college students who had experienced antisemitism. Terrell also met with leaders of Frankel Jewish Academy, one of the event’s co-sponsors, as well as the local Jewish Community Center, he said.
A longtime supporter of Trump, Klein said he believed the event demonstrated that more Jews were warming to the president as concerns about antisemitism have grown.
“I think more Jews certainly are more supportive of Trump than they were before, because they see what he’s done,” he said.
Sharon Matlen, a resident of nearby Farmington Hills who grew up in Skokie, Illinois, during the infamous neo-Nazi march of the 1970s, told JTA she had come to the event because “I’m very interested in antisemitism.”
“I really got a lot out of it,” Matlen said, of the talk. She spoke highly of Terrell: “I think he has our back. I’m glad that he’s there for us.”
Of El-Sayed, she said, “I pray he does not get in.”
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I’m an empathetic Zionist. But it’s time for all of us to stop counting our dead.
There are, and always have been, several types of Zionism, as Rabbi Angela Buchdahl’s Yom Kippur sermon reminded me. I first had to declare the type of Zionist I am in 1994 at a meeting at the Leo Baeck Temple in Los Angeles that brought together Arabs and Jews to create a speakers’ bureau that would advocate for Middle East peace at synagogues, churches and mosques in southern California.
Approximately 20 people gathered in a small room and a moderator asked each of us to speak briefly about what brought us to the meeting. One by one as the people in the room spoke, they listed the atrocities both Jews and Palestinian Arabs had suffered, including the Holocaust, the Nakhba, the mutual massacres that had taken place in British Palestine before 1948, the suicide bombings and the destruction of Palestinian homes. When it was my turn to speak, I began, “I am a Zionist.”
My Zionism was anchored in 20 years of conducting archaeological excavations in Israel, and a 1986 trip to the Soviet Union to help Jews emigrate to Israel, during which I was arrested three times by the KGB. I was an American, but an active Zionist.
I continued, “But it is time for all of us to stop counting our dead. Jews and Arabs both have enough suffering to go around. We don’t need to justify ourselves to each other by enumerating the terrible losses we have experienced. Let’s focus our attention on understanding and making peace with one another.”
My words had an impact. We moved forward to plan the bureau. I was paired with a leader of the Palestinian community in LA who looked like he could be my older brother. We spoke at universities, synagogues and churches for two years, at a time when the promise of peace was bolstered by the Oslo Accords. But when Benjamin Netanyahu was elected Prime Minister in 1996, I felt I was no longer speaking about an Israeli government that shared my aspirations, and that phase of my life ended.
Today, in the post Oct. 7 world, I feel like I am sitting in that same meeting room, only it encompasses way more than 20 people. Often, when I hear or read about the present Palestinian-Israeli conflict, I hear about the 1,200 people killed on Oct. 7, and the tens of thousands killed thereafter. The death of every child is tallied and the sufferings of every hostage recalled. We can do better.
I am an empathetic Zionist. I support the Jewish state of Israel, and I also feel empathy for its victims. My definition of empathy bridges radical differences between individuals and forces a person to look through another person’s eyes. Sympathy allows one to feel the pain of someone closely related; empathy allows one to understand a thoroughly different person. As a Jew, I sympathize with the Oct. 7 victims, the hostages and their families; but I also empathize with the Palestinians who have suffered and died in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
I believe today, as I did in 1994, that the first step toward empathy is a cease fire, not only on the battlefield, but on the frontlines of the constant bickering about who has suffered more. After almost 100 years, the time has come to empathize with the victims instead of counting them.
And we should begin with the children. A child’s suffering can change minds, whether the trauma is witnessed firsthand or through a photograph or a written description. Who in my generation can forget the 1972 picture of the Vietnamese “napalm girl,” nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc running naked and screaming after a South Vietnamese napalm attack on her village severely burned her back? The Pulitzer Prize-winning photo influenced public opinion and the anti-war movement. As Anne Frank had triggered worldwide empathy for Holocaust victims, Kim Phuc made the Vietnam war seem insupportable.
Who today are the children who can teach us about Gaza? I would choose three: Ariel and Kfir Bibas, four years old and nine months old respectively, and five-year-old Hind Rajab.
Kfir and Ariel Bibas were kidnapped along with their mother Shiri from Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7 and murdered in captivity; their bodies were returned to Israel on February 20, 2025.
Hind Rajab was five years old when she and her uncle, aunt and three cousins left Gaza City by car. Israeli shelling killed all in the car except Hind and her cousin, 15-year-old Layan Hamadeh. Layan telephoned the Palestine Red Crescent Society and was heard pleading for help and screaming as she was shot. Hind, still alive, stayed on the telephone for three hours. She died from IDF gunfire, and when the Red Crescent workers finally arrived, they too were killed.
Who are the adults today who can teach us to empathize with those children? I would choose two: Noam Chayut and Aziz Abu Sarah.
Noam Chayut was an Israeli soldier patrolling the West Bank. In his memoir, The Girl Who Stole my Holocaust: A Memoir, written in 2007, he describes an encounter with a 10-year-old “scrawny” Palestinian girl wearing “light colored clothes.” On the outskirts of a village there were children playing, she among them. With no particular intent, Noam approached and smiled at her, but she did not smile back. She was terrified, frozen for a second, which allowed Noam to look into her eyes. Then she ran away. But what he saw in her eyes was himself. He saw the soldier, the occupier and he saw someone else, someone evil. He did not see himself as evil, but she did. He empathized with her terror, and it changed his life.
As a young Palestinian man, in 1998, Aziz Abu Sarah visited Yad VaShem with trepidation. He felt if he “empathized with the enemy it would be a betrayal of his own pain,” he wrote in The Future is Peace. But he went anyway, and after he arrived at the underground chamber memorializing the death of one and a half million Jewish children he “walked out of the museum a different person.”
Both Noam and Aziz looked at children they were taught to regard as enemies. And the adversaries who populated their world became human. It is imperative that the deaths of Hind Rajab, Ariel and Kfir Bibas teach us about the trauma of our perceived foes. If we cannot empathize with them and their families, I doubt that Israelis and Palestinians can come to any understanding.
I recognize the very problematic long term political and structural problems inherent in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But how will we ever learn how the other side thinks and feels if we do not try to understand each other’s pain? Seeking mutual empathy can be the beginning of a path to a new and peaceful community.
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