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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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The post Everyone knows about Herzl. Is it time for Max Nordau, the intermarried father of Zionism, to get his due? appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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‘America Last’: Report Reveals Suspicious Foreign Support Amplifying Nick Fuentes Online
Nick Fuentes during an interview in December 2025. Photo: Screenshot
Amid ongoing debates about the rise of antisemitic voices on the US political right, recent investigations into social media activity suggest the potential involvement of inauthentic amplification by anonymous actors in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
On Monday, the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) released new research showing the techniques used by overseas operatives to promote the authoritarian ideologies of antisemitic podcaster Nick Fuentes, who claims he seeks to preserve the white, European identity and culture of the US.
Titled “America Last: How Fuentes’s Coordinated Raids and Foreign Fake-Speech Networks Inflate His Influence,” the 23-page report dissects how the 27-year-old influencer “consistently amasses far more retweets than any comparable figure, including Elon Musk, despite having a fraction (<1%) of the follower count.”
The report was co-drafted with the support of the Rutgers University Social Perception Lab. Previous research collaborations between NCRI and Rutgers have also explored how far-right influencers hijacked the religious phrase “Christ is King” to advance their ideology and how Tik-Tok content promotes the Chinese Communist Party’s international objectives.
The researchers reviewed Fuentes and compared him with other prominent accounts. They discovered that “within the critical first 30 minutes, Fuentes routinely outperformed accounts with 10-100× more followers.” The report explains that “in a sample of 20 recent posts, 61% of Fuentes’s first-30-minute retweets came from accounts that retweeted multiple of these 20 posts within that same ultra-short window – behavior highly suggestive of coordination or automation.”
The accounts are characterized as entirely anonymous and seemingly single-purpose for promoting Fuentes.
While Fuentes has grown most well-known for his endorsement of Adolf Hitler, Holocaust denial, and pre-Vatican II, Catholic-reactionary antisemitism, the report highlights the podcaster’s endorsements of terrorism and enthusiasm for sexual violence. He has stated that he seeks a 16-year-old wife, desiring an underage woman “when the milk is fresh.” This aligns with his support for the Taliban in Afghanistan, a nation which has now seen the return of child marriage. Fuentes also claims that rape within marriage is impossible, since he believes that a wife’s body belongs to her husband.
Fuentes also “praised Vladimir Putin for the invasion of Ukraine, expressed support for China taking Taiwan, and described the Taliban’s victory over US forces as a positive development.”
The researchers in their analysis seek not to explain Fuentes’s views but rather to “assess how synthetic engagement, real-world events, and media incentives converged to elevate a fringe figure into a central subject of national attention.”
Looking into Fuentes’s history and disclosures from former insiders within his organization support the suggestion of artificial engagement.
“Additional evidence shows that Fuentes has a prior history of coordinated digital manipulation. In 2022, two former associates described internal group chats where Fuentes directed interns and loyalists to carry out online tasks on his behalf, and a former technical aide alleged that viewer counts on his streaming platform were artificially inflated using a built-in multiplier,” the report states.
The researchers explain that “Fuentes did not deny the inflation itself. These documented practices demonstrate a willingness to orchestrate controlled teams and manipulate digital metrics — behavior entirely consistent with the coordinated amplification patterns observed on X.”
The report features images of “America First” Fuentes appearing on different foreign TV networks including the Iranian regime’s Press TV and Russia Today (RT). On the former he sided with Iran during an American attack in support of Israel, and on the latter, he claimed that support for Ukraine was based on “Russophobia.” He also reportedly stated that he would “fight on the side of China against America.”
Another picture shows Fuentes in 2022 at the America First Political Action Conference, where he stated in his introduction to US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA): “And now they’re going on about Russia and Vladimir Putin, saying he’s Hitler – they say that’s not a good thing. Can we get a round of applause for Russia?”
The analysts describe how “Fuentes’s defense of authoritarian adversaries — Russia, Iran, China — is not a minor contradiction. It represents a coherent pattern in which his anti-American worldview aligns more closely with America’s enemies than with its interests. His self-proclaimed patriotism crumbles in the face of performative contrarianism, where any regime that resists liberal democracy becomes, in his eyes, preferable to the current United States.”
According to NCRI, the Russian and Iranian media’s approval of Fuentes “underscores the broader point: the figure elevated by algorithmic manipulation and mainstream media grooming as a voice of nationalist revival is, in reality, one of the most reliable public defenders of America’s geopolitical foes.”
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Israel Restores Relations With Bolivia, Signs Free Trade Deal With Costa Rica as Latin American Ties Strengthen
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar (left) and Bolivian Foreign Minister Fernando Armayo (right) sign a Joint Communiqué in Washington, DC on Dec. 9, 2025, formally restoring diplomatic relations between the two countries. Photo: Screenshot
Israel is further expanding its diplomatic and economic presence in Latin America, formally restoring relations with Bolivia and signing a free trade agreement with Costa Rica as the Isaac Accords begin to take shape.
On Tuesday, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar and Bolivian Foreign Minister Fernando Armayo signed a Joint Communiqué in Washington, DC, formally restoring diplomatic relations between their countries after two years of severed relations amid the war in Gaza.
“Today, we are ending the long, unnecessary chapter of separation between our two nations,” the top Israeli diplomat said during a speech at the signing ceremony.
“Following the election of [Bolivian] President Rodrigo Paz, I am pleased to announce that Israel and Bolivia are renewing diplomatic relations,” he continued.
Israel and Bolivia: We renewed our diplomatic relations!
We’re continuing to work. pic.twitter.com/oUtcXyyaHa— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) December 10, 2025
During their meeting, both leaders committed to fully restoring diplomatic relations, appointing ambassadors, and fostering collaboration between government and private-sector representatives.
They also pledged ongoing dialogue and broader cooperation in areas including agriculture, security, health, innovation, and their shared fight against organized crime and narco-terrorism.
“Bolivia, the Jewish people, and the State of Israel share a long history of true friendship,” Saar said during his speech. “Bolivia opened its doors to Jewish refugees during the Second World War when much of the world closed its gates.”
“Bolivia supported the establishment of the State of Israel in the historic 1947 UN vote,” he continued. “For many decades, our two nations enjoyed warm diplomatic relations. The renewal of our ties is an important and welcome step.”
Bolivia has also announced it will lift visa requirements for Israelis entering the country, a move the top Israeli diplomat praised as helping to “strengthen the human bridge between our peoples.”
With the official launch of the Isaac Accords by Argentina’s President Javier Milei last week, Israel has been working to expand its diplomatic and security ties across Latin America, with the new effort designed to promote government cooperation and fight antisemitism and terrorism.
Modeled after the Abraham Accords — a series of historic US-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab countries, this initiative aims to strengthen political, economic, and cultural cooperation between the Jewish state and Latin American governments.
The first phase of the Isaac Accords will focus on Uruguay, Panama, and Costa Rica, where potential projects in technology, security, and economic development are already taking shape as the framework seeks to deepen cooperation in innovation, commerce, and cultural exchange.
On Monday, Israel and Costa Rica signed a free trade agreement covering goods, services, and investments, advancing their bilateral relations during Costa Rican Minister of Foreign Trade Manuel Tovar Rivera’s visit to Jerusalem.
Rivera also announced that Costa Rica will open an office for trade and investment innovation in Jerusalem next year.
The newly signed agreement will eliminate over 90 percent of tariffs, providing broad access for Israeli industrial and agricultural products to the Costa Rican market, while also reducing import costs on a wide range of goods, from food and medical equipment to industrial tools.
“This agreement opens significant new avenues for both Costa Rica and Israel,” Rivera said during a speech at the signing ceremony.
“It enhances access to high-quality Costa Rican goods and services while creating a mutually beneficial platform for collaboration in high-technology industries, premium agribusiness and specialized services,” he continued.
Building on the renewed momentum in diplomatic engagement across Latin America, Israel is expanding and strengthening its bilateral relations with several countries in the region.
Argentina announced plans to relocate its embassy to Jerusalem next spring, fulfilling a promise made last year as the two countries continue to deepen their ties.
Last week, Ecuador opened an additional diplomatic mission in Jerusalem, a move that Saar hailed as a “milestone” in strengthening their bilateral relations.
Paraguay, Guatemala, and Honduras, all of which have previously relocated their embassies to Jerusalem, have reaffirmed their support for Israel and signaled intentions to deepen future cooperation.
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What happens when you’re the only Jewish family in Oklahoma?
When her mother Clara dies suddenly of a stroke, Emily is left with her ashes and a note to scatter them on Sylvia’s farm in Chandler, Oklahoma. There’s a problem: Emily has no idea who Sylvia is and has never been to Oklahoma before in her life — and as far as she knows, neither had her mom.
Oklahoma Samovar, a new play opening at La MaMa’s Downstairs Theater, starts at the end of Emily’s trip to find Sylvia, who turns out to be an old woman with a bit of a memory issue and the sister of Emily’s grandmother Rose. When Emily asks why her mother would want her ashes left on the farm, Sylvia launches into their family history. She goes all the way back to 1887, when Emily’s great-grandparents Jake and Hattie fled persecution in Latvia with nothing but a feather bed and a samovar, and unfolds the stories of each generation over the play’s acts.
While most immigration stories usually focus on big cities, Oklahoma Samovar explores the little-known history of Jews in the Midwest in a deeply-human way. It is a tender portrayal of an immigrant family struggling to survive and figuring out their identity over multiple generations. Instead of villanizing or lionizing its characters, Oklahoma Samovar presents people with all their complexities, allowing them moments of moral failing while portraying them with empathy.
A fictional drama based on her own family history, playwright Alice Eve Cohen considers the play her “foundational work.”
“I’ve truly been working on Oklahoma Samovar since the day I met my Aunt Sylvia,” she said. “I met her in 1987. And I was so enthralled and inspired by her stories that I started writing about it probably the next day.”
After putting on a workshop production of the play in 2007, Cohen shelved Oklahoma Samovar to focus on other projects, including authoring two memoirs, writing several other plays, and teaching playwriting and creative writing at The New School. Over a decade later, she returned to working on Oklahoma Samovar and submitted it to the National Jewish Playwriting Contest, where it won in 2021.
“My very first draft of this play was almost verbatim documentation of the stories that Sylvia told me,” Cohen said. “It was very romantic. It was very fanciful. It was almost all positive, and there was no conflict.”
While some elements of the original play remain — such as the use of puppetry, which depicts long boat voyages and dream sequences — the new iteration is not an idealized version of the American Dream. Its characters are complex and flawed to the point that Jake kills someone trying to secure a home for his family during the Oklahoma Land Runs.
“I knew that I had incomplete stories,” Cohen said about the original conversation that inspired the play’s events.
“I’ve done research into the Oklahoma Land Run, which Sylvia described in the most romantic way,” Cohen went on. “In fact, the land run was a violent land grab, it was a theft of land from the Native Americans who had been forced to relocate to what was then called Indian territory.” Cohen explained. “I took this kernel of the story that Sylvia remembered from her childhood, her dad saying, ‘I lost my thumb, but I kept the farm,’ and I realized there was a shootout.”
Although Cohen’s exact version of events is imagined, the harsh depiction of the Land Runs encapsulates the brutality of the immigrant experience and the family’s desperate actions in pursuit of starting their lives in America.
Immigrants also had to choose between assimilating and preserving tradition, a conflict that is exacerbated for Hattie and Jake when they settle in Chandler, an Oklahoma town with virtually no Jewish community. Hattie struggles to connect with her new environment, concerned about the lack of a rabbi and a minyan, but Jake wholeheartedly embraces a new, goyish American cowboy persona. He even adopts a signature catchphrase: “Hot Diggety Damn!”
This struggle with identity follows their oldest daughter Rose into adulthood. Having grown up learning the Bible at Chandler’s Presbyterian Sunday School, Rose is unprepared for the level of Orthodoxy her new mother-in-law expects of her. A Russian immigrant who believes Rose’s lifestyle amounts to heresy, Mrs. Giventer spends her days dismissing Rose as a convert and poor excuse for a wife.
Cohen says these characters serve as a reflection of the diverse experiences in the Jewish diaspora. “They all practice Judaism in different ways. They’ve assimilated in different ways,” Cohen said. “They’ve either held on to their original accents and their original Yiddish language, or they have intentionally spurned them and Americanized as quickly and as completely as they can.”
“When family members from these different traditions and different positions in the spectrum of American Judaism meet, it isn’t always easy,” Cohen said. “There are often huge clashes.”
Even though virtually all the characters of Oklahoma Samovar are Jewish, Cohen does not imagine Jews to be her only audience.
“I think there are universal themes that relate to immigration and assimilation that anybody of any culture can relate to,” Cohen said. “While the play is set in Oklahoma and in New York and in Latvia, I think its stories transcend geographic boundaries.”
And perhaps it will inspire others to find the complicated truths that lie in the sweet family stories they’ve always heard.
Oklahoma Samovar is playing at LaMaMa’s Downstairs Theater through December 21st.
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