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Friends, colleagues and fans remember Rabbi Harold Kushner, whose voice ‘will continue to resonate’
(JTA) — Rabbi Harold Kushner was often identified as the author of “Why Bad Things Happen to Good People,” when the correct title of his best-selling 1981 book is “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.” The book was never meant to provide a definitive solution to the age-old question of theodicy — why God permits evil or suffering — although he proposed an answer.
Instead, the book was, like Kushner’s rabbinate, a call to action. As he told an interviewer in 2013, “An idea that is probably more emphasized in Judaism than in any of the Christian traditions is to minimize the theology and maximize the sense of community.” That is, when bad things happen to good people, it is a religious community’s responsibility to offer them the compassion and solace they crave in the form of chesed, or acts of loving-kindness.
When Kushner died Friday at age 88, it led to an outpouring from readers, friends and colleagues who experienced that compassion and solace first hand, or felt they knew him through his writing. Beyond that first book, which sold millions of copies worldwide, Kushner was an admired rabbi at the Conservative Temple Israel in Natick, Massachusetts, taught at several universities, and wrote over a dozen books.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency collected a number of the responses that appeared online and solicited others. A sampling of reminiscences about Kushner appears below.
Rabbi Mark Cooper, Riverdale, New York: My rabbinic career began in 1985 when I became associate rabbi to Rabbi Harold Kushner at Temple Israel of Natick. Fresh out of rabbinical school, there was much to learn and experience in order to fully embrace the demanding role of being a congregational rabbi. As I look back on the six years I spent with Harold, I can’t imagine a more nurturing or supportive start to my rabbinate.
Harold showed me what an excellent sermon looks and sounds like (not that most rabbis would ever be able to come close to the quality of homiletics that he possessed), how to use humor to connect with a congregation, how to console someone who has suffered a tragedy, and how to work with lay leaders and volunteers. He created space for me to experiment and grow in a congregation he had spent years building. And he did this always with a gentle kindness that came naturally to him.
Harold saw me not as a solution to his busy schedule, and not as someone to do the legwork he was now unavailable to do. He saw me as someone he could teach, someone to help shape and direct to be the kind of rabbi he knew others would be proud of. Harold befriended me, invited me to get to know him, and I quickly came to feel that he genuinely cared about me, about my wife Amy, and about the children we began to raise while in Natick.
(Cooper spoke at Kushner’s funeral on Monday in Natick; above are excerpts from his remarks.)
Mary Jo Franchi-Rothecker, Ontario, Canada: When I read “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” in 2008, I was able to start thinking and analyzing about recent, extremely challenging events in my life. I lost my father in late 2007, lost my 20-year legal career and was in a financial nightmare. Rabbi Kushner’s writing (I went on to read “Overcoming LIfe’s Disappointments”) gave me hope, insight and a path to “being my best self.” I am forever grateful.
Rabbi Jill Jacobs, CEO, T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights: Rabbi Kushner was the rabbi of the shul where I grew up. By the time I was there, he was already famous, and mostly not in the day-to-day running of the shul, but he and his wife Suzette were almost always there on Shabbat, sitting quietly in the back (and of course he would give powerful sermons on the High Holidays, which even the teenagers would come in to hear). And he was an important mentor for me throughout. When I was in college at Columbia, we loved to compare notes on the core curriculum (which hadn’t changed that much in between) and then we had many conversations as I made the decision to go to rabbinical school, and as I made my way through and beyond. He truly modeled what it meant to be a rabbi, and his voice — both for those of us fortunate enough to hear it directly and the millions who read his books — will continue to resonate.
Rabbi David Wolpe, Sinai Temple, Los Angeles: I always learned from Rabbi Kushner and he was very kind to me and I had wonderful exchanges with him, but the thing that most impressed me was this: When I was on book tour, the same drivers would take other authors in various cities. So I heard about the conduct of various authors, especially when they were unkind to the drivers, as too many were. Yet over and over again people would ask me if I knew Rabbi Kushner and say how unfailingly kind he was to the drivers, the hotel clerks, to everyone. I felt proud and grateful to have such a representative of our people, and we will all miss him very much.
Michael and Zelia Goodboe, Palm Beach Gardens, Florida: I praise God for the goodness of Rabbi Kushner. I am Catholic, but I have come to value Judaism even to the point of attending (with my wife) classes at a Miami synagogue to get to really know Judaism, because of the good rabbi’s influence. Some people are just blessings in this crazy world. He was truly among the Righteous who left the world in much better shape than he found it! We have lost a great person.
Rabbi Eric Gurvis, the Mussar Institute, Sherborn, Massachusetts: I literally learned of the death of my colleague and teacher, Rabbi Harold Kushner, while quoting him during a graveside funeral last Friday. As I began to share his words, the funeral director let me know that he had died earlier in the day. I paused, collected myself and continued to cite his teaching.
My journey intersected with Rabbi Kushner on numerous occasions, the first while I was serving as rabbi in Jackson, Mississippi. A member of my congregation brought him to speak to a group from across the Jackson community. “Who Needs God,” still among my favorites of his books, had just been published. He was so gracious and kind to this young rabbi he’d just met. He always was.
Fast-forward to my time in Newton, Massachusetts. I had invited Rabbi Kushner to speak at my congregation. I don’t even remember what topic we had agreed upon. His talk came just days after a tragedy in our community, in which four middle school students were killed in a bus crash on a school trip. He asked me, “What would you like me to do?” I replied, “I am so grateful you are here. Please be you, and let us be lifted by whatever you wish to share with us.” And it was so, as it has been for so many of us over the years of his teaching, preaching and touching.
Rabbi Vanessa Ochs, professor of religious studies, University of Virginia: It was Rabbi Harold Kushner who taught us, in his thought-changing book, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”: “I don’t know why one person gets sick and another does not. … I cannot believe that God ‘sends’ illness to a specific person for a specific reason.”
As we know, Jews do not interpret the Torah in a literal way. While the Torah’s God sends down punishment, Kushner’s interpretation of God does not. Kushner’s God does not punish us to teach us lessons. His God does not give us only as much as we can handle. Bad things happen. We have terrible losses. They just happen.
So where is God when we are grieving? For Kushner, this is certain, and his theology is compelling: God is with us when we grieve. God is with us when our communities organize to support us as mourners (and beyond) and when total strangers hold us up with random acts of kindness.
Rabbi Ron Kronish, Jerusalem: Rabbi Harold Kushner played an important role in my life and the life of my family more 40 years ago. In 1977, when our second daughter was born with a form of dwarfism, my wife Amy and I went to visit him and his wife Suzette in their home in Natick, Massachusetts. We were living nearby in Worcester at that time. That was a short time after their son, who was a boy with short stature, had tragically died.
Rabbi Kushner welcomed us warmly into his home and counseled us with empathy and compassion. He didn’t make us feel that he was going out of his way to meet with us or that he was meeting with us just because I was a rabbinic colleague. He was simply understanding, gracious and accommodating.
I can say that the spiritual and practical advice that he gave to us stayed with us for many years. We have always been grateful for it.
By the way, our daughter with short stature grew up to be a wonderful human being and a great rabbi-educator at the Heschel High School in New York City. Coincidentally, one of her former interns, who is now a teacher at the school, is Rabbi Kushner’s grandson! So the legacy continues to be a part of our family.
Rabbi Noam Raucher, Los Angeles, California: After reading “When Bad Things Happen to Good People,” I remember being excited to meet Rabbi Kushner. As the president of Hillel at Hofstra University at the time, I was responsible for escorting Rabbi Kushner through campus before his speaking engagement.
That was a big day at Hofstra, too. The men’s basketball team had made it to the 2001 NCAA tournament, and we were playing UCLA in the first round. As we walked through the student center, Rabbi Kushner heard the students cheering on our team and asked if we could stop to watch the game with them on television.
We stood in the back of a sea of student bodies, who would jump and shout with every shot made or blocked. I watched Rabbi Kushner as he watched the game. He stood there, tall and attentive, with his hands clasped behind his back. He had a grounding peacefulness about him. Every time the crowd grew animated, he just stood there, stoic and watching it all for the sheer enjoyment of being present for the experience.
That image stands out as I think about all the commotion I have, or will, face in my life. There will be successes and failures. Rabbi Kushner taught me to appreciate being here for all of it.
Irving Pozmantier, president, Pozmantier, Williams & Stone Insurance Consultants: For several years, it was my privilege and honor to serve with Rabbi Kushner on the board of directors for List College of the Jewish Theological Seminary. His brilliant mind was matched only by his personal warmth which made every meeting an uplifting experience. On a few occasions, we shared taxi rides to the airport during which we had an opportunity to share information about our lives and experiences. Each of those personal talks left me with feelings of gratitude for the opportunity to know someone of such innate decency and kindness. When my first wife died, he was one of the first persons to call and offer condolences. His incredible ability to express compassion was never more meaningful.
Jim Rigby, pastor, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Austin, Texas: What some critics of religion do not realize (understandably) is that people like Rabbi Kushner are trying to help dying and traumatized people make sense of their lives. It is a good thing to be scientific, but if someone is actively dying or traumatized we must enter their worldview to be helpful.
Reason and science are marvelous goals, but they can feel strangely irrelevant to someone lost in a waking nightmare. Before a terrified heart can hear an important truth it must first be healed of its fear. For me, religion has been the art of cave diving into someone else’s nightmare, learning the language of their heart, and then cheering them on as they climb out of their own private tomb and into the common light.
I will never forget sitting in a pastoral care class taught by seminary professor Will Spong (the brother of the late John Shelby Spong, bishop of the Episcopal Church). One of the students had debunked the simplistic religion of a dying patient. Suddenly, Dr. Spong began to shake like Jeremiah in an earthquake. Will’s face turned beet red and he shouted at all of us, “Don’t you dare kick out someone’s crutch unless you’ve got something better to replace it with!”
My life as a heretical minister began that year of chaplaincy. I realized theology born of abstraction was like a personal life jacket that kept me from entering the depths of another person’s fears and uncertainty. I could not descend into another person’s hell unless I could detach from my worldview and enter theirs.
What a gift it has been to be invited into peoples’ traumatic cocoons and to witness them sprouting wings that work in the real world. What a gift to be present when people discover a faith born of science, a hope born of realism, and a love unbounded by any religious creed.
Harold Kushner, Suzette Kushner and Dubi Gordon at Kibbutz Kfar Charuv in Israel. (Courtesy Gordon)
Dubi Gordon, Natick: Rabbi Kushner was my rabbi, teacher, advisor and dear friend. When I was Natick USY president, Rabbi Kushner was deeply involved and took pride that three of us became region officers in one of the most robust chapters in New England. When I helped establish a Judaic Studies program at UMass Amherst and founded Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry in Western Massachusetts, he offered invaluable advice and encouragement.
Rabbi Daniel Greyber, Beth El Synagogue, Durham, North Carolina: As a congregational rabbi, I give copies of his book, “When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough,” to high school seniors before they go off to college and I tell them the story of how my mom gave it to me and how it helped shape my life: endeavoring to live a life of meaning rather than chasing after wealth and things. I would not be a rabbi today were it not for his wisdom.
When I published my own book, I sent him a copy and asked him if he would give me an endorsement for the back cover. He told me he would be honored to read it, but that he hardly ever gave endorsements and was an especially “hard grader” on books that tackled the question of suffering. In the end, he demurred but sent me a long email with praise and constructive advice. It felt like knowing a Supreme Court judge had taken the time to read and respond to something you wrote. That correspondence is a great treasure and honor.
Rabbi Ysoscher Katz, chair of Talmud, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School: If you study the biography of Moshe Rabbeinu, you notice something surprising in the Talmud. In the Bible, Moses is presented as a jurist; the “law” animates and inspires him. The Talmudic Moses is less of a jurist and more of a theologian, grappling with Judaism’s theological unanswerables.
Personally, I prefer the Talmudic version.
Judicially, his legal philosophy has been supplanted by Rabbinic jurisprudence; biblical “law” has little significance for contemporary jurists. His theology, on the other hand, is as relevant today as it was during the time of the Exodus. The things that perplexed him then still confound us today, many centuries later.
We are told that in every generation there is one person who is imbued with a streak of Moses’ spirit and is charged with carrying on his legacy. In our generation that person was Rabbi Harold Kushner — at least as far as the theological aspect of Moses’ persona is concerned. He too, like Moses, was deeply plagued by the theodicy question, grappling and struggling with it throughout this life.
In traditional yeshivot one is taught that in Talmudic discourse the question is more important than the answer. The sophistication and passion of the inquiry proves that one has truly mastered the material.
That is Rabbi Kushner’s legacy: the anguished question of “Why?!” Why, Hakadosh Baruch Hu, do you allow bad things to happen to good people? How could you?
The validity of Kushner’s “solutions” to this perplexing question can be debated ad nauseam, but the power of his anguished Abrahamic cry — “Is it possible that the judge of the universe would condone injustice” — will outlive him, living in perpetuity as a clarion call to his survivors to do our utmost to eradicate the injustices (natural and man-made) that plague our world.
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Vance, who’s drawn ire of Jewish conservatives, will speak at Republican Jewish confab
(JTA) — Vice President JD Vance, who has drawn the ire of a number of Jewish conservatives, will speak at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual summit in Las Vegas on Monday, the RJC confirmed.
“The Republican Jewish Coalition is proud to welcome Vice President JD Vance to our National Leadership Summit in Las Vegas,” said an RJC spokesperson. “JD Vance is a friend, who is coming back after first joining us in 2022 as a candidate for the US Senate.”
Vance’s appearance comes as a number of Jewish Republicans and major GOP donors have indicated that they would rather support Marco Rubio for the presidential nomination in 2028 than Vance, who is seen as Donald Trump’s likeliest successor. Some of those donors will be in the room on Monday at the Venetian Resort, which is owned by the billionaire Adelson family — a major backer of Trump and various Jewish and Israeli causes.
The vice president has lost the confidence of the pro-Israel crowd with his reprimanding of Israeli officials, indulgence of anti-Israel conspiracy theories and silence on Tucker Carlson, the prominent pundit who has spread antisemitic conspiracy theories. Multiple donors told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency during last year’s confab that they would not support Vance in 2028.
Carlson, meanwhile, was a major focus of the discussion at the RJC’s 2025 summit, where signs reading “Tucker is not MAGA” were handed out to attendees. His son, Buckley Carlson, is a former Vance staffer.
An agenda sent by the RJC lists Vance as a speaker during a Monday evening session that will be closed to press. A spokesperson confirmed that Vance will be speaking in a “fireside chat.”
A number of high-profile Republican candidates are also expected to speak at the RJC confab, which is being held on Sunday and Monday, a few months ahead of the midterm elections. Speakers include U.S. Senate candidates Mike Collins, the Georgia congressman who is challenging Jewish Democrat Jon Ossoff, and former Rep. Mike Rogers, who is running against Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan.
Collins has faced accusations of antisemitism and having ties to the far right. He has said that some of his statements were misunderstood, and has defended himself by citing his support for Israel.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Vance, who’s drawn ire of Jewish conservatives, will speak at Republican Jewish confab appeared first on The Forward.
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Israeli expats push for voting rights in Oct. 27 election
(JTA) — When Ilana Mittman, a retired social scientist with American and Israeli citizenship, began arranging a trip to Israel from her home in Baltimore, she planned to observe her late father’s Yahrzeit and cast her ballot in the national elections on Oct. 27. Checking her voter registration status online, she made a startling discovery: She had been excluded from the voter registry and was ineligible to vote.
The discovery came as a shock. Mittman’s mother was born in pre-state Palestine. Her parents had drained swamps in order to create arable land and served in the Haganah pre-state military organization.
Mittman has lived in the United States since 1980, having moved for her husband’s medical studies and career. But she has never viewed her life abroad as severing her ties to Israel. She watches television in Hebrew, follows the country’s news, stays in frequent contact with family, donates to the country’s emergency services and engages in pro-Israel advocacy efforts.
“I didn’t really choose to leave the country; I fell in love with a man who came from overseas, and I followed him,” she said. “I’ve grieved for the loss of my country and my friends … It’s been a constant, chronic sorrow.”
Puzzled by the discovery of her voter status, Mittman reviewed her records through the Ministry of Interior online portal and noticed that on March 7, 1986, her residency status had been altered under administrative “Code 51.”
That date matched a visit to the Israeli Consulate in San Francisco shortly after the birth of her son, where she went to register him as an Israeli citizen in accordance with consular requirements. She said that during that routine appointment, consular staff took away her state-issued ID card without explanation, leaving her with only her passport for foreign travel.
“I remember how bad of a feeling it was to give that document away,” Mittman recalled. “I felt I gave a part of myself away when that happened. But I didn’t know that my biggest right as a citizen – the right to vote – was just robbed from me.”
When she spoke with friends in the expat community, it turned out that others had found themselves in a similar situation. Some only made the discovery after they had already made expensive travel arrangements to return to Israel for the election, since voting must be done in person.
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Under Israel’s Basic Law: The Knesset, every Israeli citizen aged 18 or older has the right to vote, unless a court has deprived them of that right. In practice, however, voting is limited to those included in the voter registry.
Israelis whom the government classifies as nonresidents are assigned a designation known as Code 51 and removed from the voter registry, even though they retain their citizenship.
As expats across North America, Europe, Australia and South Africa began to realize in the lead-up to the October vote that they were no longer in the voting registry, they began comparing their experiences in a WhatsApp group that grew to some 120 members.
Some, like Mittman, had not voted in Israel for decades. Others, like kibbutz-born Ayala Graham, had returned to vote in the previous elections, held just four years ago. Yet others retained their eligibility, such as Graham’s husband, who hadn’t cast a ballot in Israel in four decades.
“My blood is boiling from this situation,” said Graham, who left Israel in 1986. “I am a citizen through and through, and I was very offended by this arbitrary rejection. I feel that in these elections, the situation is even more acute than in 2022.”
With the grounds for rescinding voting eligibility opaque and no easy path to appeal the exclusion, the disenfranchised Israelis decided to pursue legal action. They are calling the grassroots initiative to restore their voting eligibility “Our Right to Vote – Code 51.”
To challenge the Code 51 exclusions, the group raised money for legal representation through crowdfunding. Then they initiated a multi-stage legal strategy designed to exhaust administrative remedies before escalating to Israel’s Supreme Court.
Represented by attorney Gilead Sher, they submitted a Freedom of Information request to compel the Israeli Ministry of Interior to disclose the criteria behind the administrative “Code 51” designations. Then they sent letters to the Ministry of Interior, the attorney general and the Central Elections Commission requesting the immediate restoration of their status.
The Israeli Ministry of Interior has not yet responded to the group’s letter about Code 51, the criteria used to remove expats from the voter registry, or the total number of citizens affected by the regulation.
Israeli Ministry of Interior spokesperson Yaffa Shai did not address questions about the meaning of Code 51 posed by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Instead, she pointed to Israeli election law, which requires voters to be listed in the Population Registry as residents, with an address in Israel, and stressed that the ministry had conducted “an extensive multilingual campaign” urging citizens to check their voter status.
Since the law requires that the voting registry be finalized on Sept. 3, the legal team set a one-week deadline for administrative responses. If the matter remains unresolved, they intend to file an emergency petition directly with the Central Elections Commission and the High Court of Justice.
There is no known official count of how many Israeli expats have been excluded from the voter registry. “We received a rough, totally unofficial estimate of several dozen thousands, out of whom we represent about 120,” said Sher, the lawyer.
He stressed that there is also no clarity regarding the criteria used to remove citizens living abroad from the voter registry. “Our argument is that whatever this arbitrary Code 51 stands for or signifies, it cannot override the constitutional right to vote,” he said.
Sher acknowledged the possibility that some expats who travel to Israel to vote may only discover their status on election day. Given the tight timeframe before the election, Sher is seeking both temporary relief and an interim injunction in the petition to ensure eligible citizens are not disenfranchised while bureaucratic procedures are reviewed.
‘Essentially voter suppression’
On the West Coast, another Israeli expat, Silicon Valley attorney Rony Sagy, was struck by the arbitrariness of the system, particularly given her past travels to Israel during election cycles.
For the IDF elite unit veteran, maintaining a close connection to Israel has been consistent over decades of living in the U.S. Her career as a San Francisco–based lawyer has included serving as a legal bridge between Israeli startups and American tech companies, and she travels to Israel several times a year, renews her passport and keeps a permanent address in the country.
She suspects that her name was removed from the voter roll following a routine consulate visit for passport renewal sometime in the 1980s, during which she was required to surrender her domestic Israeli ID card. She noted that the experience was difficult enough for someone with deep connections to the country, but the lack of transparency surrounding the act added insult to injury.
“Voting was always very, very important to me,” Sagy emphasized. “My understanding was that my voting rights would not be hampered by the confiscation of my ID card. The uneven, unidentified way or form of removing certain people from the voter rolls is essentially voter suppression.”
The debate over Israeli citizens’ inability to cast ballots from abroad with limited exceptions (for example, official government representatives stationed abroad), has been ongoing for decades. Proponents of overseas voting note that most Western democracies allow it. Opponents argue that the large number of Israelis living abroad could potentially sway an election, even though those living in Israel bear the consequences of its outcome more directly.
Public opinion in Israel on overseas voting is split, though polls typically focus on whether expats should be allowed to cast ballots from abroad rather than retain their eligibility to vote if their center of life is elsewhere.
A survey last year by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 51% of Israelis opposed allowing citizens living abroad to vote from overseas, while 39% supported it. Opposition was particularly high among Arab respondents – 55% opposed, 36% supported – relative to Jewish respondents. Among Jewish respondents, opinion was evenly divided, with 45% supporting and 45% opposing overseas voting.
Attitudes were also strongly associated with respondents’ own willingness to leave the country. Among Israelis considering moving abroad, 52.5% supported overseas voting and 40% opposed it, compared to 34% support and 55% opposition among those not considering leaving Israel.
Members of the group challenging the denial of their eligibility to vote point to the global economy, which facilitates remote work, as well as the rising number of Israelis who have left the country since Oct. 7, 2023, due to Israel’s enmeshment in several regional wars. Some have deliberately chosen to disconnect. Mittman, however, believes that the number of years spent living abroad should not define the strength of one’s connection.
“What do you mean by center of life?” she asks. “If I spend hours a day immersing myself in Israeli culture, if I am supporting friends and relatives in Israel and charitable causes in every way I can … I feel that my heart is there, that I’ve never ceased to be an Israeli. So, what does it mean to be a citizen if you cannot vote?”
She insisted that this initiative to restore expats’ voting rights is not partisan: “If somebody told me today that I can vote, I don’t know who I’m going to vote for. I have not decided.”
Regardless of whether the legal challenges are resolved ahead of the election, she plans to make the trip, spending election day volunteering to help elderly and mobility-impaired voters reach their polling stations.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Israeli expats push for voting rights in Oct. 27 election appeared first on The Forward.
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Jon Ossoff joins Democrats distancing from Hasan Piker
(JTA) — Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff distanced himself from left-wing streamer Hasan Piker, who has called Ossoff a “dark-horse” presidential candidate, citing Piker’s “reckless and dangerous rhetoric” about American Jews.
Ossoff is facing criticism from some of his state’s local Jewish community over his votes to block certain arms sales to Israel. He has joined a chorus of Democrats who criticized Piker this week over recent comments that many interpreted as justifying threats to American Jews, including a number of democratic politicians.
Speaking on a Twitch livestream on Aug. 20, Piker stated, “If Jews in America keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone’s going to come around and take action.” Piker added, “Not against the state of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews.”
An Ossoff spokesperson told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Thursday that he “unreservedly rejects reckless and dangerous rhetoric suggesting that policy advocacy invites violence against the Jewish community or any community.”
“American Jews and all Americans must have the freedom and security to speak out and petition their government without fear of reprisal,” the spokesperson added.
Ossoff’s politics and sharp criticism of Trump have generated buzz about him potentially running for president in 2028, and have attracted some left-wing figures who have lauded his messaging.
Piker was initially among those figures, telling the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in April that he was “intrigued” by Ossoff.
“I think he’s very charismatic, and he’s done things that I’ve found to be interesting, given his position in Georgia, when he was one of the first lone voices in the Senate that actually was critical about sending aid to Israel early on,” Piker said at the time. “I was like, that’s a unique position for — he’s Jewish as well — for a young American Jew to take in Georgia.”
Piker said that he heard from young Georgian Jews in his online community who “could not believe that their synagogues and their rabbis and their organizations in their communities took out like a full page ad yelling at Jon Ossoff for taking a stance against arming the State of Israel.”
Ossoff’s campaign had never responded to requests for comment about Piker until Thursday, as a slew of Democrats condemned the anti-Israel streamer’s comments.
Later that day, Piker was decidedly less enthusiastic about Ossoff when speaking on his stream.
“I don’t like Jon Ossoff,” Piker said, adding that he had “wanted to see if he had the right instincts” before declaring himself a full-fledged supporter.
“This is a moment where it’s very clear that he does not have the right instincts.” he added.
In a post on X, Piker also explained how Ossoff’s Israel stance was what sparked his initial excitement about the senator.
“i think jon ossoff’s best strengths came from his lack of interest in attacking his left flank & focusing on trump’s corruption & scandals instead,” Piker wrote. “i said he was a dark horse because he’s been smart enough to back restrictions on weapons transfers to israel at times regardless of his incredibly conservative voting track record otherwise.”
The clash between Ossoff and Piker comes as members of the Jewish community in Atlanta have criticized the Jewish Democrat, largely over his votes to block certain arms sales to Israel. Ossoff is running for reelection in November in a high-profile battle against Republican Rep. Mike Collins that could determine which party controls the Senate.
Ossoff first voted to block weapons sales to Israel in November 2024, spurring a critical open letter from several Georgia Jewish organizations including synagogues, Jewish schools, the local Anti-Defamation League chapter and other groups. His vote also drew the attention of AIPAC, which released 30-second ads attacking U.S. senators — including Ossoff — who had voted to block weapons sales.
Michael Morris, publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, penned an open letter earlier this month blasting Ossoff for voting to block weapons sales to Israel again in July 2025 and April 2026.
“I hear you claim, over and over again, that you support Israel — that your support is ‘ironclad,’” Morris wrote. “It is not.”
Morris accused Ossoff in the letter of “lying to me and your constituents” about his support for Israel. Days later, Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich appeared to run with that accusation in a post that attacked Ossoff, in response to the Senator’s remark about Donald Trump and his aide Natalie Harp.
“Ossoff routinely lies as the Jewish leaders in Atlanta pointed out recently and we should accept that he is a profoundly dishonest politician with no sense of honor,” Gingrich wrote.
Asked about Ossoff’s comments on Piker, Morris told JTA he agreed with the statement, but that it wasn’t enough to win his support.
“It’s better than him supporting Piker — absolutely, 100%,” Morris said. “But, you know, talk is cheap, and trying to push one extremist a little bit out of the envelope — it’s one little step forward. Very little.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Jon Ossoff joins Democrats distancing from Hasan Piker appeared first on The Forward.
