For the first time since Israel’s founding, the government has rejected a binding ruling of the Supreme Court.

At first glance, the effects of the latest outrage from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government may appear narrow in scope. The immediate dispute concerned the Second Authority for Television and Radio, an independent broadcasting regulator, and a technical disagreement over whether it may continue operating after resignations left it without the quorum ordinarily required by law.

But don’t be deceived: The Netanyahu cabinet’s Sunday choice to adopt a resolution declaring it would not recognize a court order that would allow the regulator to continue functioning has serious implications. Whatever one thinks of the legal merits of the underlying case, that declaration establishes a constitutional precedent unlike any that has existed in Israel until now. And it underlines a longstanding theme of Netanyahu’s campaigning in advance of the October elections: His claim that the Supreme Court is the unelected enemy of the people.

The dispute itself arose after the Supreme Court froze controversial appointments to the Second Authority, including for a new chairperson, while it considered petitions challenging the appointments.

Following the court’s intervention, several members of the council resigned in what the justices suggested appeared to be a coordinated effort to prevent the regulator from functioning. Their departure left the council without the statutory quorum needed to conduct business, including deciding on the proposed acquisition of the TV station Channel 13 by a liberal group led by tech mogul Asaf Rappaport.

The Supreme Court responded in June by ruling that those resignations could not be used as an excuse to avoid implementing its earlier orders, and allowed the regulator to continue operating pending a final decision. Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi and Justice Minister Yariv Levin argued that the court had effectively rewritten the governing statute.

Now, rather than seeking reconsideration or pursuing legislative change, the cabinet has adopted a resolution declaring that it will not recognize decisions made by the Second Authority in the wake of the court’s order.

Reasonable lawyers can and should disagree about whether the Supreme Court reached the correct legal conclusion. Courts issue controversial rulings, and governments are entirely entitled to criticize them, seek legislative remedies, campaign to change the law or argue that judges exceeded their authority. That process is an essential part of how a healthy democracy works.

But until this past weekend, such disagreements in Israel always took place within a constitutional framework in which the government’s obligation to obey binding judicial decisions remained unquestioned.

For several years, the current coalition has waged an increasingly aggressive campaign against institutions that constrain executive power.

The judicial overhaul proposed in 2023 sought to weaken the courts’ ability to review government action, sparking months of massive protests against what Israelis rightly viewed as a sharp turn toward authoritarianism. Since then, ministers have repeatedly attacked the attorney general, legal advisers, prosecutors and senior civil servants as unelected officials frustrating the will of the majority. And the government quietly revived some parts of the proposed overhaul last year.

The latest confrontation carries that argument one decisive step further.

Levin, the justice minister, argued that the court’s ruling “contradicts the clear language of the law.”

The subtext to his statement is clear: it’s an anti-democratic assertion that only the governing coalition can determine what laws actually mean. And the timing is no coincidence. Israel is approaching what many regard as the most consequential election in its history, and public discussion has increasingly been shaped by fears that Netanyahu — who is still on trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust — will attempt to sabotage the election, launching the country into an unprecedented constitutional confrontation over the electoral process.

If those fears materialize, the Supreme Court will be the institution called upon to determine what the law requires. A government that has already established the principle that it may refuse to recognize judicial rulings has inevitably altered the context in which that dispute would unfold.

Thus, the implications of Levin’s words are grim. If the Supreme Court attempts to counteract Netanyahu in the fall, it’s easy to imagine the cabinet making a version of this exact argument as an excuse to ignore those rulings, too.

With that context in mind, the cabinet’s decision prompted sharp outcry, including from President Isaac Herzog, who said it struck “at the heart of the nation’s unity.”

And it called to mind a famous — if possibly apocryphal — declaration attributed to former Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who founded Netanyahu’s Likud Party, that “there are judges in Jerusalem.” Those words became foundational in Israel because they reflected a foundational democratic principle: that elected leaders, no less than ordinary citizens, are themselves subject to the law as interpreted by the courts.

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The wandering Jew. The rootless cosmopolitan. Being homeless and belonging nowhere has long been a negative Jewish stereotype.

But what if this trait was, instead, something beautiful?

That’s the idea posed by Nabatele, an art installation from Ukrainian-Jewish artist Anna Kamyshan. A synagogue, an amalgam of different wooden shtetl synagogues across Europe, perches on a heap of earth. But it’s not on the ground — the synagogue is soaring in the sky.

It sounds impossible, but Kamyshan is installing Nabatele as an official project of the Venice Biennale, where it will float over the city’s lagoon, starting July 16. She worked with engineers in the U.K., a production company in Spain, and she imported some supplies from Denmark to make it all come together.

“We are trying to engineer some magic,” Kamyshan said, describing the process over a video call.

The Venice Biennale, which has been around since 1895, is the oldest art festival of its kind. It is organized by country; each has its own pavilion in Venice where artists representing their nation install their pieces. But that utopian vision of inclusion isn’t always simple. This year, in protest of both Israel’s and Russia’s participation, the entire jury — the group in charge of meting out the festival’s prestigious awards — resigned from the festival after putting out a statement that they would not award artists from countries “whose leaders are currently charged with crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court.” (Both Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin fall into this group.) Protests, led by the activist group Art Not Genocide Alliance, have marched through the streets of Venice.

But Nabatele is affiliated with the Yiddishland Pavilion, a project that sidesteps the entire controversy of choosing which nations can participate. It isn’t tied to Israel, or, for that matter, any other country. In fact, arguably it isn’t tied to the Biennale. It’s not even a physical pavilion. It debuted — unofficially — at the Biennale in 2022, when artist Yevgeniy Fiks and curator Maria Veits had the idea of a “conceptual, independent, non-national” pavilion. But it’s something of a guerilla project. Since Yiddishland doesn’t have a physical pavilion, its exhibits are scattered around the city, often including performance art popping up in public spaces.

In an interview with the Forward in 2025, Fiks said the idea of Yiddishland originally emerged  in the early 20th century when a group of Yiddish-speaking Jews toyed with rejecting nation-based identity in favor of “the idea that Yiddish language and culture create their own homeland — an imaginary place where Yiddish-speakers always belong.” It’s fitting, then, that its pavilion is similarly ephemeral.

Nabatele, however, is a very physical piece. Yiddishland might not have a physical state or pavilion, but despite this lack of space on land, the installation is monumental. It floats, filled with helium, over Venice’s waters. And it was too big to install without the Biennale’s official buy-in. So Kamyshan, with support from the Montreal Jewish Museum, submitted the project to become an official part of the festival, as a “Collateral Event.” It was a longshot, the artist said, and none of them expected it to be accepted.

But it was. Which meant Kamyshan had to figure out how to actually make the project.

“If there would be this stateless state of Yiddishland, what would be the representation of it at the Venice Biennale? For me it’s clear — there is no space, it has to fly,” Kamyshan said. “It’s also a very Jewish thing, not to be rooted.”

Nabatele’s synagogue rests on what appears to be a massive pile of rocks and soil — an earthly groundedness it carries into the sky. (How does all of this wood and dirt float? Well, Kamyshan told me it was made of “the most cosmic magical materials,” and also a lot of helium. Beyond that, she said that she didn’t want to spoil the illusion.)

The name comes from a compound of the Slavic word nabat, which means a beacon or alarm in Russian and Ukrainian, along with the Yiddish diminutive elle, softening the meaning. (Nabat in biblical Hebrew has a related definition, meaning “to look.”)  Light shines out of its windows, a nod to every synagogue’s ner tamid, or eternal light, serving as a sort of flare or lodestar, beckoning to passersby.

“I think it’s difficult times for Jews to identify yourself as Jews,” Kamyshan said. “It’s just heavy, you know?” So she made something light — an alarm to remind people not of the danger of being Jewish, but of its beauty.

If all goes well with installation, the highest point of the floating synagogue will be 45 meters above the water — nearly 150 feet.

Kamyshan said she hopes the message of lightness, and of carrying a home within yourself, will be universal for members of an increasingly globalized world. As a Ukrainian-Jewish woman, born to a Russian-speaking family — and simply as an artist who has moved regularly and lived in cities across the world — Kamyshan said she related to the idea of rootlessness beyond its Jewish history. In the past, she struggled with the feeling that she was never quite enough of any one of her identities to belong. Today, however, she sees her lack of home as a kind of superpower that prevents her from being “trapped by some land.”

“I have to be rooted within myself, and it gives me a lot of freedom. And I enjoy this freedom,” she said. “And when you look at this art object you think: Was it ever part of the land and was uprooted? Or did it always enjoy this freedom? And I like this ambiguity.”

The floating synagogue Nabatele will be on view in Venice from July 16 through Sept. 16, 2026, weather depending.

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The World Cup is in full swing. Cristiano Ronaldo, CR7 himself, is improbably, arrogantly playing his sixth tournament at the age of 41. The media loves it: the Lionel Messi vs Ronaldo rivalry continues. Ronaldo plays on with tears and tantrums, breaking records and refusing to simply grow old and go home.

But David Bolchover, author of Digging Deep: Unearthing the Stories of Eleven Murdered Jewish Footballing Greats, finds himself thinking about a different 41-year-old: Jozsef Braun. Arguably the greatest Jewish footballer who ever lived, he was killed by the very Hungarians who had once cheered his name.

“When he was murdered, he was 41,” Bolchover told me when we spoke recently. It was less than 15 years after he had last scored an international goal for Hungary — then one of the top few international teams in the world.

Millions of Jews across Europe were part of the burgeoning soccer culture that was sweeping the continent, with disproportionate representation among elite players, coaches and referees, The way Bolchover tells it, the Jewish soccer culture lost in the European Holocaust was as substantial as the foundational Jewish contributions to culture that helped bring western civilization into the 20th century.

Although he restricts himself to people who played for their countries and who were murdered in the Shoah, Bolchover has selected a team of greats in all 1 positions. He quotes Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, in 2022, saying “There is no Europe without European Jews,” but where she was thinking that “Europe is Mahler and Kafka, and Freud,” Bolchover is thinking Braun, Zygmunt Steuermann, Béla Guttmann and Arpad Weisz.

These were some of the elite players, coaches and visionaries of the sport — the Messis, Ronaldos, Pep Guardiolas, Zinedine Zidanes, and Carlo Ancelottis of their time. Indeed, Bolchover says that one significant reason that Hungary and Austria’s all-conquering soccer teams became second rate was that they murdered the Jewish populations who were instrumental in achieving and perpetuating that excellence. Dave Rich, who wrote about the UK release of the book, made a point that Bolchover says he wishes he had thought of himself: “Jewish footballers were as prevalent in the football leagues of central and Eastern Europe in the 1920s and 1930s as Black players are in the Premier League today.”

The team that Bolchover unveils in his book would strike fear into the hearts of any pre-War expert on European soccer. Wunderkind Steuermann scored Poland’s first ever international hat trick. Max Scheuer played his whole career for the Jewish, Zionist team Hakoah Wien and led them to the Austrian national title. Weisz went from international star player to record-winning coach, winning the Italian championship for Bologna and Inter Milan. He remains the youngest coach to win Serie A.

Across eight chapters, Bolchover tells the stories of his 11 selected players of his selection and, in so doing, tells a particular history of the Shoah. He can even ignore György Molnár and József Eisenhoffer who between them, in 1924, scored Hungary’s first six goals as they humiliated Italy 7-1 in Budapest. But, along with the glory, it seems like on every page there are footnotes chronicling the tragic fate of the Jews in the towns and villages from which players, their wives, and their families hail.

“I’m not going to just mention a place where Jews lived and not tell you what happened,” Bolchover said. “To me, that’s an abandonment of responsibility. You often get non-Jewish English writers just letting it lie: ‘He was from this area and he died in Auschwitz.’ It’s not good enough.”

Bolchover deliberately avoids saying that these men “died” or that they “perished”; he says they were murdered. “Vocabulary is very important,” he told me. “You have to use ‘murder.’ You can’t use ‘died.’ Even ‘perished,’ I don’t like… I talk about the Holocaust as the Holocaust was. A Jew who’s not angry about the Holocaust is a strange Jew.”

Bolchover is also scathing about the nations for whom his protagonists played. He resists describing many of his players simply as Hungarian, Austrian or German. History, he argues, has already rendered its verdict. “The ones that thought they were Hungarian, the ones that thought they were German, the ones that thought they were Austrian were proven to be wrong,” he said. “They were rejected by the host societies… In the end, they were Jews.”

This is not a polite book. Bolchover does not soften his account for squeamish readers, and he does not traffic in the comforting framing that has come to dominate Holocaust memory in the West: the survivor, the righteous gentile, the redemptive arc. His previous book, The Greatest Comeback, told the story of Béla Guttmann — the brilliant Jewish coach saved by his future brother-in-law — and even that book, Bolchover insists, “did not pull any punches.” This one pulls even fewer. This one is about the rule that Jews were industrially murdered by diverse populations across the continent, not the exception of a few that were saved.

“I felt I needed to write this book,” he said. “I felt more and more drawn to the stories of those who didn’t make it. You feel a responsibility to tell their stories because nobody else can tell them. I felt if I don’t write this book about these 11 players, nobody would. And certainly not in the right way.”

The book was sparked, in part, by fury. In 2019, the release of the biopic about Bert Trautmann — the German goalkeeper who played for Manchester City and who had served in the Wehrmacht — generated a wave of admiring press coverage that Bolchover found intolerable. Trautmann had, it was widely noted, apologized for being a Nazi; the coverage seemed to imply that he was a great guy who had simply made some unfortunate early choices.

“He apologized for being a Nazi, but he was a Nazi,” Bolchoverf said. “He apologized for being an antisemite, but he was an antisemite. And the regime he fought for and supported murdered all these great Jewish footballers that nobody’s ever heard of.”

That nobody has heard of them is not an accident. It is, Bolchover argues, a failure of collective memory — one that begins with the mass extermination of the Jewish crowds who would remember their heroes and proceeds to the shame and repression of the national crowds who gleefully murdered their Jewish compatriots. Jews too have been too quick to embrace the “people of the book” stereotype and look to claim credit for founding football clubs (Bayern Munich, yes; Eintracht Frankfurt, yes; Ajax, yes) while remaining curiously silent or ignorant about the fact that Jews were also, for a golden pre-war generation, many of the very best players on the continent.

“Jews, even Jews, are slightly uncomfortable with the fact of their own ignorance, that actually it wasn’t the founders that were important,” he said. “Why all the focus on that? Why not all the focus on all the top international footballers and coaches? Do we focus really on the founders now, or on the chairman? No, we focus on Messi and Ronaldo.”

The answer, Bolchover suggests, is the Holocaust. Not just because it killed the players, but because it killed the memory of the players. The destruction of European Jewry was so total, so final, that it erased not only lives but legacies. When people laugh and say Jews aren’t really footballers — better suited to medicine, to finance — they are, Bolchover argues, “laughing at our own destruction.”

The 11 players in the book are drawn from across Europe. Bolchover’s structural rule — that they must all be full internationals — was deliberate. He is making a point: These were not obscure club players; they were the stars of their nations, the best their countries could produce. And then their countries killed them.

Bolchover mentions the research he and others have done using Holocaust Yizkor Books — the Jewish memorial books, where decimated communities honored their obligation to remember the dead by listing the names and fates of former neighbors. Bolchover resists that simplistic framing. This is not a memorial volume in the old community sense. It is a piece of serious sports history and Holocaust scholarship, with deep archival research, extensive footnoting, and the kind of narrative drive that makes it readable to someone who has never opened a Jewish history book in their life.

He is withering, too, about the broader European refusal to reckon honestly with the nature of the Holocaust. As Simon Schama has argued — and Bolchover echoes — the Holocaust was not something that happened to the Jews while Europe stood helplessly by. It was something Europe did to the Jews, on a grand scale, with widespread participation. “That’s something Europe doesn’t want to talk about,” Bolchover said. “And even European or British Jews and American Jews don’t want to talk about it.”

None of this is comfortable reading. None of the conversation I had with Bolchover was comfortable. But, in the way that Bolchover insists the Holocaust itself must be discussed, it is honest. As he writes in the book, “to say that the destructive assault on European Jewry was some sort of historical blip or carried out and supported only by an elite cadre of committed German Nazis, constitutes a highly underestimated and sophisticated form of Holocaust denial.”

Which brings us, inevitably, to the 2026 World Cup. To the question of what this history means for the Jews who are alive today, watching the tournament on their screens and phones, where only one Jewish player is on the roster of any of the 48 teams and not a single one is from Europe. This isn’t because Jews are good at business not sport, it’s because Europeans murdered all the Jews who were brilliant sportsmen and coaches and all the Jews who would remember them.

At his UK book launch, Bolchover made the link explicit. Ronaldo at his sixth World Cup. The greatest Jewish footballer who ever lived, murdered at 41. The crowds in their national colors, Norwegians rowing, Senegal drumming, the Scots with their bagpipes, the Dutch in orange. And then the question that nobody wants to ask: What would happen if Israel qualified for the World Cup?

“What would happen if they were there? Nobody would go, ‘Oh, look at those fun-loving Israelis.’ Even in America. And imagine if they were anywhere else in the world.” The same hatred, he said quietly, that accounted for the murder of his eleven players — it is still there. Still in football. FIFA, he noted, has never held a memorial for the great Jewish footballers and coaches who were murdered in the Holocaust.

We know why.

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