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From ‘how to’ to ‘why bother?’: Michael Strassfeld writes a new guide to being Jewish
(JTA) — “What the son wishes to forget the grandson wishes to remember.” That’s known as Hansen’s Law, named for the historian Marcus Lee Hansen, who observed that while the children of immigrants tend to run away from their ethnicity in order to join the mainstream, the third generation often wants to learn the “old ways” of their grandparents.
In 1973, “The Jewish Catalog” turned Hansen’s Law into a “do-it-yourself kit” for young Jews who wanted to practice the traditions of their grandparents but weren’t exactly sure how. Imagine “The Joy of Cooking,” but instead of recipes the guide to Jewish living had friendly instructions for hosting Shabbat, building a sukkah and taking part in Jewish rituals from birth to death. Co-edited by Michael Strassfeld, Sharon Strassfeld and the late Richard Siegel, it went on to sell 300,000 copies and remains in print today.
Fifty years later, Rabbi Michael Strassfeld has written a new book that he calls a “bookend” to “The Jewish Catalog.” If the first book is a Jewish “how to,” the latest asks, he says, “why bother?” “Judaism Disrupted: A Spiritual Manifesto for the 21st Century” asserts that an open society and egalitarian ethics leave most Jews skeptical of the rituals and beliefs of Jewish tradition. In the face of this resistance, he argues that the purpose of Judaism is not obedience to Torah and its rituals for their own sake or mere “continuity,” but to “encourage and remind us to strive to live a life of compassion, loving relationships, and devotion to our ideals.”
Strassfeld, 73, grew up in an Orthodox home in Boston and got his master’s degree in Jewish studies at Brandeis University. Coming to doubt the “faith claims” of Orthodoxy, he became a regular at nearby Havurat Shalom, an “intentional community” that pioneered the havurah movement’s liberal, hands-on approach to traditional practice. He earned rabbinical ordination from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College when he was 41 and went on to serve as the rabbi of Congregation Ansche Chesed on the Upper West Side and later the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, the Manhattan flagship of Reconstructionist Judaism.
“To be disrupted is to experience a break with the past and simultaneously reconnect in a new way to that past,” writes Strassfeld, who retired from the pulpit in 2015. This week, we spoke about why people might find Jewish ritual empty, how he thinks Jewish practices can enrich their lives and how Passover — which begins Wednesday night — could be the key to unlocking the central idea of Judaism.
Our conversation was edited for length and clarity.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: I wanted to start with the 50th anniversary of the “Jewish Catalog.” What connects the new book with the work you did back then on the “Catalog,” which was a do-it-yourself guide for Jews who were trying to reclaim the stuff they either did or didn’t learn in Hebrew school?
Michael Strassfeld: I see them as bookends. Basically, I keep on writing the same book over and over again. [Laughs] Except no, I’m different and the world is different. I’m always trying to make Judaism accessible to people. In the “Catalog” I was providing the resources on how to live a Jewish life when the resources weren’t easily accessible.
The new book is less about “how to” than “why bother?” That’s the challenge. I think a lot of people take pride in being Jewish, but it’s a small part of their identity because it doesn’t feel relevant. I want to say to people like that that Judaism is about living a life with meaning and purpose. It’s not about doing what I call the “Jewishly Jewish” things, like keeping kosher and going to synagogue. Judaism is wisdom and practices to live life with meaning and purpose. The purpose of Judaism isn’t to be a good Jew, despite all the surveys that give you 10 points for, you know, lighting Shabbat candles. It’s about being a good person.
So that brings up your relationship to the commandments and mitzvot, the traditional acts and behaviors that an Orthodox Jew or a committed Conservative Jew feels commanded to do, from prayer to keeping kosher to observing the Sabbath and the holidays. They might argue that doing these things is what makes you Jewish, but you’re arguing something different. If someone doesn’t feel bound by these obligations, why do them at all?
I don’t have the faith or beliefs that underlie such an attitude [of obligation]. Halacha, or Jewish law, is not in reality law. It’s really unlike American law where you know that if you’re violating it, you could be prosecuted. What I’m trying to do in the book is reframe rituals as an awareness practice, that is, bringing awareness to various aspects of our lives. So it could be paying attention to food, or cultivating attitudes of gratitude, or generosity, or satisfaction. My broad understanding of the festival cycle, for example, is that you can focus on those attitudes all year long, but the festivals provide a period of time once in the year to really focus on, in the case of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, for example, saying sorry and repairing relationships.
In “Judaism Disrupted: A Spiritual Manifesto for the 21st Century,” Michael Strassfeld argues that the challenge of each generation’s Jews is to create the Judaism that is needed in their time. (Ben Yehuda Press)
Passover is coming. Probably no holiday asks its practitioners to do so much stuff in preparation, from cleaning the house of every trace of unleavened food to hosting, in many homes, two different catered seminars on Jewish history. Describe how Passover cultivates awareness, especially of the idea of freedom, which plays an important part thematically in your boo
The Sefat Emet [a 19th-century Hasidic master] says Torah is all about one thing: freedom. But there’s a variety of obstacles in the way. There are temptations. There’s the inner issues that you struggle with, and the bad things that are out of your control. The Sefat Emet says the 613 commandments are 613 etzot, or advice, that teach us how to live a life of freedom. The focus of Passover is trying to free yourself from the chains of the things that hold you back from being the person that you could be, not getting caught up in materiality or envy, free from unnecessary anxieties — all these things that distract us or keep us from being who we could be.
The Passover seder is one of the great rituals of Judaism. We’re trying to do a very ambitious thing by saying, not, like, “let’s remember when our ancestors were freed from Egypt,” but rather that we were slaves in Egypt and we went free. And at the seder we actually ingest that. We experience the bitterness by eating maror, the bitter herb. We experience the freedom by drinking wine. We don’t want it just to be an intellectual exercise.
Unfortunately the seder has become rote. But Passover is about this huge theme of freedom that is central to Judaism.
I think some people bristle against ritual because they find it empty. But you’re saying there’s another way to approach rituals which is to think of them as tools or instruments that can help you focus on core principles — you actually list 11 — which include finding holiness everywhere, caring for the planet and engaging in social justice, to name a few. But that invites the criticism, which I think was also leveled at the “Catalog,” that Judaism shouldn’t be instrumental, because if you treat it as a means to an end that’s self-serving and individualistic.
Certainly rituals are tools, but tools in the best sense of the word. They help us pay attention to things in our lives and things in the world that need repair. And people use them not to get ahead in the world, but because they want to be a somewhat better person. I talk a lot these days about having a brief morning practice, and in the book I write about the mezuzah. For most Jews it’s become wallpaper, but what if you take the moment that you leave in the morning, and there’s a transition from home to the outside and to work perhaps, and take a moment at the doorpost to spiritually frame your day? What are the major principles that you want to keep in your mind when you know you’re gonna be stuck in traffic or a difficult meeting?
And a lot of traditional rituals are instrumental. Saying a blessing before you eat is a gratitude practice.
But why do I need a particular Jewish ritual or practice to help me feel gratitude or order my day? Aren’t there other traditions I can use to accomplish the same things?
Anybody who is a pluralist, which I am, knows that the Jewish way is not the only way. If I grew up in India or Indonesia and my parents were locals I probably wouldn’t be a rabbi and writing these books.
But a partial answer to your question is that Judaism is one of the oldest wisdom traditions in the world, and that there has been a 3,000-year conversation by the Jewish people about what it means to live in this tradition and to live in the world. And so I think there’s a lot of wisdom there.
So much in Jewish tradition says boundaries are good, and that it’s important to draw distinctions between what’s Jewish behavior and what’s not Jewish behavior, between the holy and the mundane, and that making those distinctions is a value in itself. But you argue strongly in an early chapter that that kind of binary thinking is not Judaism as you see it.
Underlying the book is the notion that Rabbinic Judaism carried the Jewish people for 2,000 years or so. But we’re living in a very different context, and the binaries, the dualities — too often they lead to hierarchy, so that, for example, men matter more than women in Jewish life. And we’ve tried to change that. We are living in an open society where we want to be more inclusive, not less inclusive. We don’t want to live in ghettos. Now, the ultra-Orthodox say, “No, we realize the danger of trying to live like that. We don’t think there’s anything of value in that modern world. And it’s all to be rejected.” And it would be foolish not to admit that in this very open world the Jews, as a minority, could kind of disappear. But I think that Judaism has so much value and wisdom and practices to offer to people that Judaism will continue to be part of the fabric of this world — the way, for example, we have given Shabbat as a concept to the world.
You know, in the first 11 chapters of the Torah, there are no Jews. So clearly, Jews and Judaism are not essential for the world to exist. And that’s a good, humbling message.
OK, but one could argue that while Jews aren’t necessary for the world to exist, Judaism is necessary for Jews to exist. And you write in your book, “If the Jewish people is to be a people, we need to have a commonly held tradition.” I think the pushback to the kind of openness and permeability you describe is that Jews can be so open and so permeable that they just fall through the holes.
It certainly is a possibility. And it’s also a possibility that the only Jews who will be around will be ultra-Orthodox Jews.
But if Judaism can only survive by being separatist, then I question whether it’s really worthwhile. That becomes a distorted vision of Judaism, and withdrawing is not what it’s meant to be. I think we’re meant to be in the world.
Your book is called “Judaism Disrupted.” What is disruptive about the Judaism that you’re proposing?
I meant it in two ways. First, Judaism is being disrupted by this very different world we’re living in. The contents of the ocean we swim in is very different than in the Middle Ages. But I’m also using it to say that Judaism is meant to disrupt our lives in a positive way, which is to say, “Wake up, pay attention.” You are here to live a life of meaning and purpose, and to continue as co-creators with God of the universe. You’re here to make the world better, to be kind and compassionate to people, to work on yourself. In my mind it is a shofar, “Wake up, sleepers, from your sleep!” “Judaism Disrupted” says you have to pay attention to issues like food, and justice, and teshuva [repentance].
You were ordained as a Reconstructionist rabbi. Do you think your book falls neatly into any of our current denominational categories?
[Reconstructionist founder] Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan’s notion of Judaism as an evolving religious civilization is the one that I feel closest to. But I feel that the denominational structure isn’t particularly useful anymore. There’s basically two categories, Orthodox and the various kinds of liberal Judaism, within a spectrum. The modern world is so fundamentally different in its relationship to Jews and Judaism that what we’re seeing is a variety of attempts to figure out how to respond. And that will then become the Judaism for the next millennium. It’s time for a lot of experimentation. I think that’s required and out of that will come a new “Minhag America,” to use Isaac Mayer Wise’s phrase for the emerging custom of American Jews [Wise was a Reform rabbi in the late 19th century]. And we don’t need to have everybody doing it one way. As long as people feel committed to Judaism, the Jewish tradition, even if they’re doing it very differently than the Jews of the past, they will be writing themselves into the conversation.
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Amid Push for Gaza Role, Palestinian Authority Continues Paying Terrorists, Teaching Antisemitic Hatred
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas looks on as he visits the Istishari Cancer Center in Ramallah, in the West Bank, May 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohammed Torokman
As Western powers push for the Palestinian Authority to take a leading role in post-war Gaza, the government body has not delivered on promises of reform, continuing payments to terrorists and using school textbooks that glorify violence, demonize Israelis, and promote antisemitic themes.
On Wednesday, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar denounced the Palestinian Authority (PA) for nearly doubling its payments under its so-called “pay-for-slay” program — from $144 million in 2024 to $214 million so far in 2025 — despite the PA’s repeated promises of reform.
“The Palestinian Authority hasn’t stopped its payments of salaries to terrorists and their families. In fact, it is nearly doubling them,” the top Israeli diplomat said in a post on X.
“I call on Europe and the world to hold the PA accountable for funding terrorism. Stop Pay-for-Slay NOW!” he continued.
The Palestinian Authority hasn’t stopped its payments of salaries to terrorists and their families. In fact, it is nearly doubling them.
In 2024, it paid 144M dollars (€124M). In 2025, it has already committed 214M dollars (€185M) toward Pay-for-Slay, and the year isn’t even… pic.twitter.com/Iwyuy3le6y
— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) November 19, 2025
Even though PA President Mahmoud Abbas announced plans to reform the system earlier this year, new media reports reveal that Palestinian leadership has continued to issue payments.
The European Union (EU) is now demanding clarification on whether the “pay-for-slay” program is still operating through bypass channels, according to Euronews.
Western countries have been pushing for the PA to undergo internal reforms, aiming for the group to take control of Gaza after the war under the US-backed peace plan, despite strong Israeli objections.
The PA, which has long been riddled with accusations of corruption, has also maintained for years the “pay-for-slay” program, which rewards terrorists and their families for carrying out attacks against Israelis.
Under the policy, the Palestinian Authority Martyr’s Fund makes official payments to Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, the families of “martyrs” killed in attacks on Israelis, and injured Palestinian terrorists.
Reports estimate that approximately 8 percent of the PA’s budget is allocated to paying stipends to convicted terrorists and their families.
This week, Israeli officials visited Brussels to present evidence to the bloc that the old “pay-for-slay” program is still operating and may be using funds that EU member states had originally donated for other purposes.
“We understand that a recent payment has been made to the families of prisoners, based on a previous scheme. We profoundly regret this decision, as this seems to go against prior announcements,” the EU Commission told Euronews.
However, the European bloc rejected any suggestion that its funds were involved in the recent payments.
“EU support to the PA is linked to its efforts to pursue the reform agenda,” the EU Commission said.
For years, the EU has been the largest provider of external assistance to the group, allocating approximately $1.47 billion bilaterally between 2021 and 2024.
As the international community seeks to chart a path for Gaza’s reconstruction after the Israel-Hamas war, the PA is maneuvering to take a leading role in the war-torn enclave, despite Israeli objections and with the backing of Western powers — a move that experts say is unlikely to succeed given the PA’s lack of credibility and support for terrorism against Israel.
Along with pledging to reform the “pay-for-slay” program, Abbas has also repeatedly reaffirmed his commitment to long-promised administrative reforms, even saying he intends to hold presidential and general elections after the war under international supervision.
The PA leader was elected to a four-year term in 2005, and he has not held elections since then.
Beyond payments to terrorists, the PA has also repeatedly promised Western powers to reform its school textbooks, which for years have notoriously promoted antisemitism and hatred for Israel.
Despite the PA’s promises, its textbooks continue to glorify violence, demonize Israelis, propagate antisemitic themes, and promote an exclusivist nationalist narrative.
On Wednesday, the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), a nonprofit organization that analyzes schoolbooks and curricula around the world, released a new study analyzing 290 textbooks and 71 teachers’ guides used across multiple grades, finding that not a single reform has been made to address previous problematic content that promotes violence and incites hatred.
IMPACT-se’s report on the 2025–26 Palestinian Authority curriculum reveals a disturbing reality: Palestinian children are still being indoctrinated with the glorification of violence, antisemitism, promotion of martyrdom and the rejection of peace—embedded even in math and…
— IMPACT-SE (@IMPACT_SE) November 19, 2025
For years, PA-issued textbooks have been criticized for promoting extremism and undermining efforts to encourage peaceful coexistence with Israelis.
According to the newly released report, the textbooks’ content remains unchanged despite the PA’s explicit promises to reform the curriculum and public assurances from European officials that such reforms were underway.
IMPACT-se CEO Marcus Sheff said the findings “expose a stark and disturbing reality.”
“Virulent antisemitism, the glorification of jihad, and incitement to violence remain deeply embedded across all grades of Palestinian Authority textbooks,” Sheff said in a statement.
For example, Jews and Israelis continue to be portrayed as inherently evil, manipulative, corrupt, or as enemies of Islam, perpetuating deeply rooted antisemitic stereotypes, while the demonization of Israel remains a persistent and striking theme throughout the textbooks.
An 11th-grade history textbook features a cartoon with antisemitic imagery portraying Jews as controlling the world, including a black-and-white image labeled “cultural colonialism” showing two arms gripping a globe — one holding an American flag, the other an Israeli flag.
In a 10th-grade history textbook, it is claimed that after World War II, “the Zionists hoped the US would support the establishment of their national homeland in Palestine — by exploiting their political, media and financial influence in the United States.”
Another example comes from a 9th-grade civics textbook, which claims that Israel “deliberately releases herds of pigs” to damage Palestinian crops and undermine the Palestinian economy.
The newly released study also warns that the textbooks promote and justify violence against Jews and Israelis, fostering a culture of aggression and hostility.
In an 11th-grade history textbook, the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre — where 11 Israeli athletes and delegation members were killed — is depicted as a legitimate form of Palestinian resistance.
“The Palestinian resistance resorted to many methods in its struggle against the Zionist occupation. The fedayeen primarily used guerrilla warfare inside Palestinian territories, and also struck Zionist interests abroad — such as the Munich operation in 1972,” the book says.
According to the IMPACT-SE report, references to Jewish history and Israeli-Arab diplomatic efforts have been completely removed from the 2025–2026 textbooks, with any content promoting non-violence or compromise absent and the Holocaust entirely ignored.
The PA had committed to curriculum reforms earlier this year in order to secure over $462 million in economic support from the European Union, contingent on meeting specific education-related benchmarks.
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Texas Designates CAIR, Muslim Brotherhood as Terror Groups, Vows Shutdowns
CAIR officials give press conference on the Israel-Hamas war. Photo: Kyle Mazza / SOPA Images/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday announced the designation of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as terrorist organizations, prompting enforced state government action against them.
“The Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR have long made their goals clear: to forcibly impose Sharia law and establish Islam’s ‘mastership of the world,’” Abbott said in a statement. “These radical extremists are not welcome in our state and are now prohibited from acquiring any real property interest in Texas.”
The five-page proclamation on CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) features a brief history of the two groups and illuminates their relationship, opening with a quotation from MB founder Hassan al-Banna, who stated, “Jihad is an obligation from Allah on every Muslim and cannot be ignored nor evaded.”
The document further quotes al-Banna defining Jihad as “the fighting of the unbelievers, and involves all possible efforts that are necessary to dismantle the power of the enemies of Islam including beating them, plundering their wealth, destroying their places of worship and smashing their idols.”
Abbott goes on to establish the continuity of the Brotherhood’s objectives and ideology today.
“Even in the present day, Mohammed Badie, the Eighth Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood who is currently serving a life sentence for plotting an armed insurrection in Egypt, has stated that the organization’s primary goal is to establish Islam’s ‘mastership of the world’ and a total reform of all domains of life by resurrecting an Islamic state — or a Caliphate — empowered to forcibly impose Sharia law worldwide,” the document states.
The proclamation then cites two sources establishing the relationship between CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood, including the FBI calling CAIR a “front group” for “Hamas and its support network.” Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades, was founded as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Abbott’s proclamation also quotes the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, writing that America’s leading academic research center on extremism reports that CAIR is an example of conscious efforts by “the US-based Hamas network to regenerate itself” and continue acting “under new guises” in the United States based on Hamas’s “need to camouflage the identity of the new organization.”
The document then runs down a series of Texas legal codes which Abbott cites to justify his conclusion to “designate both the Muslim Brotherhood and its successor organization CAIR as Foreign Terrorist Organizations under Texas Penal Code § 71.01(e), and thereby subject those organizations, and any persons promoting or aiding their criminal activities, to the heightened penalties authorized by Chapter 125 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code.”
On Wednesday, Abbott followed through with the order by sending a letter to North Texas District Attorneys and Sheriffs, the Attorney General of Texas, and the Texas Department of Public Safety with concerns that Sharia tribunals “may be masquerading as legal ‘courts’ staffed with ‘judges’ issuing orders that purportedly carry the authority to bind individuals to Islamic codes, thereby preempting state and federal laws.”
“The US Constitution’s religious protections provide no authority for religious courts to skirt state and federal laws simply by donning robes and pronouncing positions inconsistent with western civilization,” Abbott wrote. “I urge you, therefore, to investigate efforts by entities purporting to illegally enforce Sharia law in Texas. Legal disputes in Texas must be decided based on American law rooted in the fundamental principles of American due process, not according to Sharia law dispensed in modern day star chambers.”
MB, a global Islamist network, has garnered headlines over the past week for reportedly engaging in theft and corruption.
On Sunday, researchers in Egypt announced that the MB had allegedly stolen half a billion dollars from donations made to Gaza. The Jerusalem Post reported that Khaled Mansour, a younger Hamas member, wrote, “How is it conceivable that many Brotherhood elites and Islamists remain silent about the biggest theft scandal in the history of the Islamic movement of the funds of the people of Gaza.”
The Swedish Newspaper Expressen has also announced that over a hundred million dollars were allegedly stolen from taxpayers by MB-linked imams.
Robert S. McCaw, CAIR’s government affairs director, wrote in response to Abbott: “You do not have the authority to unilaterally declare any Americans or American institutions terrorist groups, nor is there any basis to level this smear against our organization.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in August that the federal government was actively working to designate the MB as a terrorist group.
“All of that is in the works, and obviously there are different branches of the Muslim Brotherhood, so you’d have to designate each one of them,” Rubio said when asked about designating the global Islamist network.
“These things are going to be challenged in court,” Rubio said. “Any group can say, ‘Well, I’m not really a terrorist. That organization is not a terrorist organization.’”
“You have to show your work like a math problem when you go before court,” he continued. “All you need is one federal judge — and there are plenty — that are willing to do these nationwide injunctions and basically try to run the country from the bench. So, we’ve got to be so careful.”
In the US House, Florida Reps. Jared Moskowitz (D) and Mario Díaz-Balart (R) reintroduced earlier this year the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act, which would direct the State Department to classify both the organization and its affiliates as terrorist entities.
US Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has spearheaded an effort in the Senate to designate the Brotherhood.
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US Rep. Randy Fine Says It Would ‘Be Nice’ to See JD Vance Condemn Tucker Carlson
Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) leaves the US Capitol after the last votes of the week on Sept. 4, 2025. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL), one of the most strident supporters of Israel in the US Congress, indicated during an event on Tuesday that he would like to see Vice President JD Vance criticize popular conservative podcaster Tucker Carlson’s antisemitic conduct.
“I think it’d be nice,” Fine said when asked by The Algemeiner whether he thinks Vance, who is friends with Carlson, should publicly distance himself from the controversial pundit.
“I think that, you know, given that Tucker’s become a deranged lunatic, I think we should all be speaking out against Tucker,” Fine said.
Carlson has sparked a fierce backlash after inviting white nationalist Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust denier, onto his podcast, where Fuentes made antisemitic statements about “organized Jewry” and praised Sovet dictator Joseph Stalin. Critics argued that Carlson failed to condemn or even challenge Fuentes, arguing the online provocateur and former Fox News host offered a congenial platform to normalize Fuentes’s view. The controversy has ignited a rift within conservative circles, including public rebukes from Republican senators and Heritage Foundation staffers, highlighting growing tensions over antisemitism and Israel in the Republican Party.
Prior to the Fuentes interview, Carlson stoked outrage after inviting guests who engaged in Holocaust minimization and made remarks in favor of Adolf Hitler. Carlson also suggested that Hamas should be considered a legitimate government and not a terrorist organization.
Carlson has repeatedly alluded to the unfounded notion that Israel deliberately oppresses Christians while minimizing the heavily documented persecution of Christians by Islamic movements, such as the ongoing mass killing of Nigerian Christians.
Furthermore, Carlson’s friendship with Vance has come under increased scrutiny, with many observers fearing that the popular pundit might influence the vice president to adopt harsher views against Israel. Vance raised eyebrows recently after he failed to push back against a college student who asked him why the United States should continue to support Israel while claiming that Jews “openly support the persecution” of Christians.
Vance employs Carlson’s son, Buckley Carlson, as his deputy press secretary. Vance recently lashed out at journalist Sloan Rachmuch after she demanded that Buckley publicly answer questions about his positions on antisemitism and Israel, suggesting that the pundit’s son could be exerting influence over the vice president.
Political analysts have speculated that Vance, who is widely perceived as a likely successor to US President Donald Trump to lead the Republican Party and win its 2028 presidential primary, could break from GOP orthodoxy by establishing a significantly more critical stance against Israel. A series of recent polls suggest that younger Republicans are increasingly skeptical of the US-Israel alliance. Due to his prominence among Republicans and positioning for the party’s future, conservative leaders have called on Vance to repudiate antisemitism forcefully and reemphasize the importance of the bond between the US and the Jewish State.
On Tuesday, Fine, who is Jewish, also expressed hope that antipathy against Israel and Jews won’t become a major feature in the 2028 presidential primary, arguing that the Trump administration has proactively taken a number of aggressive steps to mitigate the influence of antisemitism among conservatives. He also took a swipe at fellow Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA) and Thomas Massie (KY), branding the anti-Israel lawmakers as “antisemites.”
“Hopefully not, because hopefully we’re going to squash this,” Fine said, “I point out this: I serve with two antisemites on the US House of Representatives, and Donald Trump is seeking to have both of them defeated next year in their primaries. I think it’s clear where the president stands.”
Massie enraged Jewish conservatives after claiming that every member of Congress has an “AIPAC babysitter” which monitors their voting record on Israel. AIPAC, a prominent lobbying group, seeks to foster bipartisan support for the US-Israel alliance.
Massie has also refused to vote in favor of a resolution “calling on elected officials and civil society leaders to counter antisemitism and educate the public on the contributions of the Jewish American community.” He sparked outrage in December 2023 after posting a “meme” which contrasted “American Patriotism” with “Zionism.”
Taylor Greene has also sparked ire from pro-Israel conservatives when she attempted, unsuccessfully, to add an amendment stripping military aid to Israel to a large defense spending bill. In recent months, the lawmaker has intensified her rhetoric against Israel, establishing herself as the sole Republican to condemn Israel for “genocide” in Gaza.
Trump has announced his intention to support primary challengers against both members, who have opposed him on a range of issues including Israel.
Fine spoke to The Algemeiner at an event in Washington, DC titled “Exposing and Countering Extremism and Antisemitism on the Political Right” where he was featured as a keynote speaker. The event was organized in response to the rise of Fuentes and a wave of antisemitic rhetoric baacked by major right-wing online influencers.
Fuentes has praised Hitler, engaged in Holocaust denial, called for “perfidious Jews” to be murdered, all while becoming increasingly popular with an audience of disaffected young men. Along with Carlson and Fuentes, Candace Owens, another prominent right-wing influencer, has spent the last two years following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, spreading conspiracy theories about Israel and calling Jews “demonic” and “pedophilic.”
During his keynote speech, Fine said that the fight against antisemitism is an “existential fight for the nature of our country.”
He stressed that no country that has gone down the “path of antisemitism” has survived and urged Jewish conservatives not to ignore antisemites as fringe voices. Fine lamented the growing issue of right-wing antisemitism, claiming that “we have an issue in our own party, where the evil has come into our own midst.”
Fine argued that Carlson is now the “most dangerous antisemite in America” because he still harbors credibility among conservatives from his popular Fox News show and that most people don’t know that he has become a “nutgbag.”