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Jewish comedian Modi Rosenfeld, a mainstay for Orthodox audiences, is gay. So what?
(JTA) — Mordechi Rosenfeld, the Jewish comedian, insists that the recent Variety article in which he reveals he is married to a man is not a “coming out” piece.
“This article is showing that I’m a veteran comedian and I’m married to a man,” said Rosenfeld, who is known to his friends and fans by the nickname Modi. “This is it. It doesn’t feel like a coming-out piece to me because I’ve been out.”
Anyone who has listened closely to Rosenfeld’s podcast in the last year would know that he and his husband have been married since 2020. The pair talk about living and traveling together, and in a recent episode revealed they would be vacationing on Fire Island, which has a famous gay scene, with prominent gay Jewish cookbook author Jake Cohen.
But the news could easily have come as more of a surprise for one swath of Rosenfeld’s core audience: Orthodox Jews from communities like the one where he grew up, where LGBTQ inclusion remains an unfamiliar and often frowned-upon frontier. Rosenfeld has delivered his signature blend of highly informed Jewish comedy, which often digs into the technical details of Jewish law, on kosher Passover cruises; at benefits for Orthodox organizations including yeshivas, Young Israel chapters and Hatzalah, the Orthodox ambulance service; and on the annual Chabad-Lubavitch movement telethon. But until recently, his routine has contained little whiff of his personal life — in fact, some of his jokes suggested to his fans that he had a wife named Stacy.
“Stacy” is in fact his manager and husband, Leo Veiga, a millennial raised Catholic in South Florida whom the 52-year-old Israel-born, Long Island-raised comedian met on the New York City subway in 2015. The split content has reflected Rosenfeld’s long-espoused belief that the only way comedy can work is to tailor the set to the crowd.
“Even though some religious organization has brought me in and people are coming to see me, I understand I’m under the umbrella of a certain demographic that I need to respect and know the audience,” Rosenfeld told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “If you put me in front of an audience, I give them what they need. And they don’t need gay material — they need the material for this audience.”
“But when I’m on the road doing my material, I can do whatever I want,” he added. “They came to see me.”
The Variety article was born of Rosenfeld’s deepening belief that it’s possible to merge his Orthodox and gay identities more publicly — something that he has long done as a congregant and sometimes-cantor at the Modern Orthodox synagogue he attends in the East Village.
“The prayers are done in an Orthodox way. And somehow, gays have been attracted to come to this synagogue,” he said. “We have a whole group of gay people and we have a whole group of trans people welcome.”
“The rabbi’s thing is no one should ever feel bullied, no one should ever feel excluded,” Rosenfeld said. “Be you. Be a proud Jew and be you.”
Rosenfeld’s “not a coming out piece” is significant and part of a broader recent pattern, according to Rabbi Steve Greenberg, the founding director of Eshel, an advocacy organization for LGBTQ Orthodox Jews and their families.
“You used to leave. Coming out meant [you] had to go. Because you could either stay and be silent, or speak up and leave,” Greenberg said. “What has begun to change the story is people insisting on not choosing between their religious identities and their queer identities and insisting on staying in Orthodox communities.”
The Variety piece comes at a time of tension around LGBTQ inclusion in Modern Orthodoxy. Yeshiva University — where Rosenfeld studied at the Belz Cantorial School of Music — has made headlines for fighting for the right not to recognize an LGBTQ student club. This month, a synagogue affiliated with the Modern Orthodox flagship also made news for its treatment of a transgender congregant; Yeshiva’s top Jewish law authority said she could no longer pray there.
The episode ignited strong feelings for Rosenfeld.
“To torture someone like that, somebody who’s religious, who’s keeping the mitzvahs, who’s teaching, who’s doing that, and to open that up and to do what they did is so terrible,” Rosenfeld said. “It’s so, so terrible. That’s the only thing I can tell you.”
For Rosenfeld, there’s no tension between Jewish observance and being gay — although his articulation of why reveals an awareness of the pain that others might feel in trying.
“Being gay, you can keep Shabbos, you can keep kosher, you can keep anything you want to do,” he said. “You can learn Talmud, you can learn Torah, the only thing you can’t do is kill yourself. You can’t commit suicide. That’s not even on the table as an option.”
When Rosenfeld shared the Variety article on his Instagram page, the vast majority of the nearly 800 comments left by fans and friends showed support for his public embrace of his gay identity.
“It’s amazing that you announce that you are gay,” one fan wrote. “You are an example to all the Jews struggling with their gayness. You are a role model to me. Cheers.”
“I think it’s great you can be out with so many of your orthodox fans,” wrote Peter Fox, a freelance writer and Jewish community advocate. “What a wonderful gift of visibility.”
But a few commenters said they would boycott his work in the future, some citing interpretations of Jewish law.
“I can’t believe you are gay,” wrote one person. “What a giant Hillul HaShem [desecration of the name of God]. I lost all respect for you. Unfollowing now. And good luck to you when it’s time to be judged by The Almighty.”
Rosenfeld doesn’t anticipate that the Variety article will lose him any gigs. If anything, he says, it might actually increase his audience. Since he has started adding gay material to his repertoire, his audiences have been increasingly LGBTQ, like at some of the “Holidazed” shows he performed in December at Sony Hall in New York.
Still, he noted, “onstage, I’m more Jewish than I am gay.”
Rosenfeld began to dabble in comedy while working on Wall Street early in his career, when his colleagues realized he was good at impressions. In the last several years, he has emerged as a leader in a wave of comedians focusing on their Jewish identities, even playing himself on an episode of HBO’s “Crashing.” Five years ago, New York City’s then-mayor, Bill de Blasio, declared June 26 as “Mordechi Modi Rosenfeld Day” in honor of his contributions to the artistic community, and last August, Rosenfeld co-hosted the first-ever Chosen Comedy Festival on Coney Island with his frequent comedy partner Elon Gold to a crowd of 4,000. The Jewish comedy show has since gone on to an audience in Miami and will head to Los Angeles in February.
Meanwhile, Rosenfeld has embarked on a steady stream of sold-out shows on multiple continents himself, while enjoying several viral moments. In one bit that was shared thousands of times last year, he pilloried the practice of taking people who have made antisemitic comments to Holocaust museums, joking, “It just gives them ideas.”
Since comedy clubs reopened after their pandemic closures, Rosenfeld has worked on new material at New York’s iconic Comedy Cellar, where patrons’ phones are kept in sealed envelopes and filming is prohibited. The absence of phones gives comedians the freedom to workshop new material — and a lot of that new material, for Rosenfeld, has been focused on living with a millennial husband.
Rosenfeld and Veiga’s story is a classic New York City meet-cute: The comedian was riding the 6 train when he felt a tap on his shoulder. It was Veiga, then an intern at CAA, the talent agency, introducing himself.
“And then we went on a date,” Rosenfeld told JTA. “I picked him up and I brought him to the Comedy Cellar, where I was performing. And he didn’t know that.”
After his 15-minute set, Rosenfeld returned to the comedians’ table, where he had nabbed Veiga a seat, to gauge his date’s reaction. “I said, ‘So I’m a comedian.’ And then we had dinner, we had two more dates, and then he moved in.”
In the eight years they have been together, Rosenfeld credits Veiga with facilitating the evolution of his career as both his husband and manager. During the COVID lockdown, as comedians everywhere found themselves unable to perform in their usual crowded clubs, Rosenfeld says he thought he was getting a break from work — but it was Veiga who suggested a pivot to video. That’s when Rosenfeld grew his online presence and developed his now-beloved characters, like the Israeli know-it-all “Nir, not far” (married to the fictitious, off-camera Stacy) and the Hasidic Yoely, who reviews quarantine-era TV shows and runs for president.
While Yoely is a character, Rosenfeld, too, is religiously observant. He wraps tefillin in the morning, even while touring, and he and Veiga keep a kosher home. Though Veiga is not Jewish — the couple had a civil wedding — he attends synagogue with Rosenfeld, his Hebrew and Yiddish pronunciation is excellent, and he is extremely well-versed in Jewish ideas and lingo. That has occasionally enabled him to stand up for their relationship when encountering people who believe it is forbidden: In one anecdote on the podcast, Rosenfeld shared that at a Shabbat retreat at a yacht club in notoriously conservative Orange County, California, a man at the couple’s table told them that the Bible says two men should not live together. Veiga retorted that the Bible says people should not mix wool and linen — implying that not all strictures are always followed, and leaving the man dumbfounded, according to Rosenfeld’s account.
Veiga has been part of Rosenfeld’s podcast behind the scenes since it began in August 2021, and began appearing on-screen in the taped recordings in December of that year. (In a sign of how deeply Jewish content is woven into his own life, he once wore a kitschy shirt referring to “muktzeh,” the prohibition of touching or moving certain objects on Shabbat.) Rosenfeld co-hosts the podcast with Jewish comedian Periel Aschenbrand, where guests include a mix of mostly comedians with the occasional rabbi (one time, Alan Dershowitz made an appearance).
Leo Veiga, left, wears a t-shirt bearing the Hebrew word “muktzeh,” which refers to a prohibition of touching certain objects on Shabbat. (Screenshot via YouTube)
In the December episode with Jake Cohen, Rosenfeld and Veiga recounted their experience at the Republican Jewish Coalition meeting in Las Vegas. The couple, who admitted to following RuPaul’s Drag Race more closely than American politics, learned what causes Republican Jews were almost universally excited by (Israel and antisemitism on college campuses) and what causes they were lukewarm on (abortion) solely based on the volume of applause in the room. They also said they were surprised by how welcomed they felt as a gay couple at a Republican event, and remarked on how many of the political figures and donors they met were excited to show them pictures of all the other gay couples they knew.
Veiga said in the episode that he didn’t learn until after they agreed to the gig that the conference lineup included Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence, whom Rosenfeld said he found “a little creepy.” Both men have advanced policies and ideas that are anti-LGBTQ.
Rosenfeld said he had no principled objection to performing for Republicans, or anyone else.
“If the Democrats want to invite me, I will go there,” Rosenfeld said. “If Al-Qaeda wants to invite me, we’re there. A check and a microphone, and I’m there. It’s simple.”
The aside came as Rosenfeld, Veiga and Cohen discussed one of Rosenfeld’s favorite ideas — what he calls “moshiach energy.”
“Moshiach energy,” as Rosenfeld puts it, is akin to the Jewish principle of loving your neighbor as yourself and then putting that energy into the universe in order to bring about the coming of the Messiah. The idea is inspired by the last leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch Orthodox movement, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson — a major source of inspiration for Rosenfeld, who studied at a Lubavitch yeshiva.
Comedian Modi Rosenfeld Rosenfeld speaks with Rabbi Manis Friedman, right, and comedian Periel Aschendbrand on his podcast in November 2021. A portrait of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the last rebbe of the Chabad Orthodox movement, is behind Rosenfeld. (Screenshot via YouTube)
It’s an attitude that he says is embodied by his synagogue, which he has attended since it opened in the 1990s.
“I am so fortunate to belong to a synagogue, Sixth Street Community Synagogue, where when you put moshiach energy out, it comes right back at you,” he said.
Schneerson considered homosexuality a sin and advocated for Jews to choose not to yield to homosexual urges. Last year, on his podcast, Rosenfeld hosted a Chabad rabbi, Manis Friedman, the former translator for the Rebbe, who espouses the same view; he said he finds Friedman inspiring even though he may not agree with all of Friedman’s views. It’s one of many instances where Rosenfeld has been able to square his identities in ways that have proved challenging for others.
Greenberg, the executive director of Eshel, agreed with Rosenfeld’s hypothesis that the Variety article would have little effect on the comedian’s ability to book gigs — and he said Rosenfeld’s commitment to Orthodox ideas and practices could work in his favor.
“Maybe some of those organizations that have hired him before will actually think this is an even more important reason to have him,” Greenberg postulated. “Some people will see this as a kind of affirmative step that you don’t have to abandon your religious identity because you’re gay.”
It’s an idea that is central to one of Rosenfeld’s signature jokes. For him, being Jewish means praying with tefillin every day, eating kosher food and observing Shabbat — while also being married to his husband.
“I always say: the Jewish people — we’re not the chosen people, we’re the choosing people,” Rosenfeld said. “Being Jewish is a lifestyle — like Equinox.”
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The post Jewish comedian Modi Rosenfeld, a mainstay for Orthodox audiences, is gay. So what? appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Samuel Beckett’s characters may have seemed inert, but he didn’t wait to fight antisemitism
A newly published diary of Samuel Beckett’s extended trip to Nazi Germany in the late 1930s helps to explain why the Nobel Prize-winning Irish author became active in the Resistance movement in Occupied France. Already discussed and cited by Beckett scholars in such studies as Samuel Beckett’s German Diaries 1936–1937, the new book explains how the creator of Waiting for Godot, that dramatization of stasis and futility, could turn out to be a man of action opposing the Holocaust and the downfall of German culture.
At a time when only an estimated 1% or so of French citizens dared to assist the Resistance, Beckett was from neutral Ireland, where sympathies were often skewed to the enemies of the much-loathed British. But he risked his life to participate. Notoriously, after Adolf Hitler died in 1945, Irish Prime Minister Éamon de Valera visited the Reich ministry in Dublin to express official condolences at the demise of Der Führer. By contrast, Beckett scorned the Irish politician W.T. Cosgrave in a letter to a friend. Cosgrave, whose 1930s followers donned so-called Blueshirt uniforms and saluted superiors like worshipers of Mussolini and Hitler, was simply a “cockatoo” arrayed as a “Fascist,” according to Beckett.
Beckett spent time in almost three dozen German cities listening to fascists describe the appeal of the New Order, as well as radio broadcasts by Nazi leaders and other believers in the Third Reich. Yet unlike youthful foreign aesthetes who dallied in Fascist Europe, like the American architect Philip Johnson, who became a vocal advocate of Nazism and antisemitism, Beckett was never seduced by German propaganda. Possibly due to his close ties to Jewish friends and family members, Beckett refused to accept Nazi beliefs on race. Also, his finely honed artistic taste did not permit him to discard creative spirits because of their family origin.
Not limiting himself to reading about and discussing such persecution with sympathetic Germans as well as devotees of Nazism, he also spent time with Jews who had already suffered from the regime’s racial laws. One example was the painter Gretchen Wohlwill, a student of Matisse who was forbidden to paint by German authorities. Murals by Wohlwill at a public high school in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel named after women’s rights and education advocate Emilie Wüstenfeld were painted over by a Nazi-approved artist. Beckett met with Wohlwill repeatedly during his extended stay.
Beckett also dined at The Halali, a well-known Jewish-run wine restaurant and bar in the central Altstadt district of Hamburg. Ironically, the establishment’s name in German refers to a traditional cry or signal played on a horn to announce the successful end of a hunt. By the time Beckett patronized the place, Jews had already become the prey of Germany’s fascist rulers. His guest was Ilse Schneider, a German teenager on whom he had an unrequited crush. In romantic matters, Beckett was typically cool.
Indeed, a few months after returning from Germany, he had an affair with the American Jewish heiress and art collector Peggy Guggenheim, who found Beckett so languid and lethargic that she nicknamed him Oblomov, after an indecisive character in a 19th century Russian novel. An inert nobleman, the book’s eponymous hero rarely leaves his room or bed; in the first 50 pages, Oblomov only manages to move from his bed to a chair. Yet the inaccuracy of Guggenheim’s gibe was proven a few years later, when France awarded Beckett medals for working as a courier for a French Resistance network and assisting in sabotage operations against German occupation forces in the Vaucluse mountains, evading imminent arrest by the Gestapo. And all the while, he continued his literary output, polishing his much-admired 1944 novel Watt.
In his diary, just as the Polish Jewish historian Emanuel Ringelblum’s Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto were intended to preserve traces of daily life soon to vanish, Beckett carefully, even pedantically, noted details of his experience in Germany, even specifying the streets he walked along during outings in Hamburg and elsewhere, as if expecting them to be destroyed in an upcoming apocalypse.
The result is evocative, if not always compelling, reading. But an apparently dry extended list of paintings and monuments seen, noting when works by Jewish artists were missing or stored out of sight, had a documentary value in response to exalted rhapsodic Nazi tomes. Beckett carefully read (with frequent underlinings) Hitler’s manifesto Mein Kampf as well as “Der Stürmer” (Stormtrooper) a weekly German antisemitic tabloid newspaper. These doubtless made him reject lofty pro-Hitler advocacy which he persistently heard from others during his visit.
Although Beckett would always demur if interviewers asked about the philosophical content in his work, during his German visit and afterwards, he was drawn to Jewish philosophers in an attempt to puzzle out how Germany, whose culture and language he admired, could self-destruct through racist inhumanity. To address this mystery, Beckett pored over Baruch Spinoza’s Ethics; works by Edmund Husserl and Fritz Mauthner; and Ernst Cassirer’s biography of Immanuel Kant. Mauthner concluded with a prefiguration of Nazi devastation: “In his negative thinking, Kant is already the destroyer of everything.”
Similarly, soon after his arrival in Germany in 1936, Beckett realized that war was inevitable. Enthusiasm for Hitler, stoked by Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels, was such that Germans “will soon have to fight: a war, or “they will explode.” With omnivorous energy akin to that of his mentor James Joyce, Beckett also consumed popular schlock like Erwin Guido Kolbenheyer’s novel about Spinoza, Amor Dei (Love of God), an antisemitic polemic that likens Jewish scholarship to a spider’s web spun over a “cup of joy,” to the “disgust of the thirsty.” Or Hans Grimm’s People with No Room (Volk ohne Raum), a fictional account justifying German invasion of East Europe to acquire land and wealth.
Beckett absorbed this deleterious material, but also read works of banned Jewish authors like Franz Werfel and Stefan Zweig. While mostly remaining discreet in public about his convictions, Beckett nevertheless marveled about the political obliviousness of Karl Ballmer, a painter whose canvases he admired. Ballmer would return to his native Switzerland in 1938 after blithely ignoring foreshadowings of the destruction of European Jewry.
The newly published diaries, which will appear next year in the U.S. and will be dramatized on Deutschlandradio, a public broadcasting corporation in Germany, understandably have less literary verve than Beckett’s missives to friends. Jotted down in a crabbed handwriting and not intended for publication, his diaries were preserved in a cellar storage space of Beckett’s Paris apartment and later donated to an archive at the University of Reading. Always one to belittle himself, the modest Beckett termed the journal “absurd” because it “serves no purpose” and is merely “the act of an obsessional neurotic.” On the contrary, as documentary evidence of how fascism can take hold of a population, its significance is ever-more timely and powerful for Jewish readers in America and elsewhere.
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Can an anti-Zionist Democrat win in a heavily Jewish South Florida district?
(JTA) — Democratic primary voters in Florida’s newly drawn 25th Congressional District are choosing on Tuesday between an anti-Zionist member of the Democratic Socialists of America and one of Israel’s staunchest supporters in Congress.
The race offers a test of whether the Democratic Party’s progressive insurgency can extend to a district that includes Delray Beach, Boca Raton and Miami Beach and an electorate that is roughly 25% Jewish, highlighting the party’s widening divisions over Israel.
Redistricting has transformed what had been solidly Democratic territory into a district President Donald Trump would have carried in 2024. The new lines pit Oliver Larkin, a DSA member who has accused Israel of genocide and called for ending U.S. military aid to the country, against Jared Moskowitz, a two-term congressman who backs continued U.S. military aid even as support for it has eroded within his party.
Polling from Moskowitz-aligned firms has shown him with a lead of 30-plus percentage points, while a more recent poll from a Larkin-aligned outlet this month put the two in a statistical dead heat.
Larkin’s language has alarmed some Jews, including his labeling of modern-day Israel as a “religious supremacist” country and his call for Israel to become a “secular” state. “I do not support a religious supremacist regime, whether it be in Israel or Saudi Arabia, or any other country,” Larkin told Fox News.
Larkin supports a complete arms embargo on Israel, and told JTA that that should be “the minimum standard for anyone claiming to support democracy.” Asked by Fox News if he supports selling defensive weapons to Israel, Larkin responded, “I do not make a distinction between offensive and defensive weaponry.” He also backed New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s goal of arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Larkin doubled down after Mamdani backed down from the stance, saying, “I believe that the United States, any federal or otherwise law enforcement entity that has the legal jurisdiction to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu for his war crimes — that should be enforced.”
Larkin has courted support from left-wing, anti-Zionist Jews who support his platform and says that he has spoken out against antisemitism on the campaign trail.
“Our campaign believes in collective liberation for all people and that includes the liberation of Jewish South Floridians and Jewish people the world over from antisemitism,” Larkin said in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. He said that there is a rise in fascism across the U.S. and that we “must recognize the link between antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, xenophobia, transphobia, and more and build a coalition to unite together to defeat these forces.”
Larkin said he supports a “one-state solution with equal and democratic rights for all people.”
Progressive, pro-Palestinian candidates with similar platforms have won the Democratic nomination this midterm cycle in deep-blue districts around the country. Larkin, who worked on Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, is betting he can match their success even in a heavily Jewish district that leans more to the center.
Moskowitz, who is endorsed by AIPAC and Democratic Majority for Israel, outright accused Larkin of fueling antisemitism, telling the Sun Sentinel editorial board in a letter that his opponent “has embraced the support of individuals and organizations that have repeatedly trafficked in antisemitic rhetoric and hostility toward the Jewish community.”
Last month, a Boca Raton rabbi encouraged Republican congregants to register as Democrats so they could cast their votes for Moskowitz. The far more moderate Democrat has refused to debate Larkin, saying that his opponent is contributing to antisemitism.
Moskowitz has also claimed that Larkin is “running against me solely on my religion.” The Sun Sentinel board rated Moskowitz’s claim “demonstrably untrue” and, in an unusual move, said it would not endorse him for reelection after he declined a joint interview with Larkin. The paper decried what it described as Moskowitz’s “lack of respect for voters.” Moskowitz’s campaign did not respond to a JTA request for comment.
Moskowitz has outraised Larkin 11-to-1, according to local media estimates. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has raised $667,200 of Moskowitz’s $2.5 million through June 30, according to campaign finance analyses done by the website Open Secrets.
Donna Nevel, a member of the South Florida chapter of the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace, believes Larkin can win.
“There are thousands and thousands of us, from Jewish communities and all across South Florida, who are doing everything we can to make sure that Oliver will be our congressperson,” Nevel said to a cheering crowd, during a fundraiser held in New York City earlier this month.
She also said that “many Zionist organizations think that South Florida is their backyard.” She continued, “And we say, ‘Hell no!’”
In an email to JTA, Nevel said there are a “large and growing” number of Jews in the district supporting Larkin, including “well over a hundred Jewish canvassers on a regular basis.” Larkin joined a JVP-hosted Shabbat dinner with Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Florida’s left-wing U.S. Senate candidate Angie Nixon on Friday.
Larkin has said that we “should not be supporting or allowing AIPAC to influence our elections.” He told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that the group has a “corrupting influence” and that it only supports Congress members “on the condition, in my estimation, that they support wholesale U.S. military aid to Israel.”
Left-wing streamers Hasan Piker — a staunch Israel critic who’s drawn antisemitism accusations — and Michael Beyer, who was suspended from Twitch after calling Jews a “demon ethnicity,” have both fundraised for Larkin.
Asked about their support, Larkin told the Sun Sentinel that both figures have used “language that I personally have not used and will not use,” and said that as a candidate it is important “that I speak in respectful terms and based in fact.”
“But I believe that when those individuals have made those references it’s been towards members of the Israeli government,” Larkin said, as well as Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
“So certainly they’re not politicians and they don’t speak in political terms, and I don’t condone language that dehumanizes any individual,” he said. “I do think that they have legitimate criticism — even if it is rather unvarnished in how they convey it — of what the Israeli government has done.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Can an anti-Zionist Democrat win in a heavily Jewish South Florida district? appeared first on The Forward.
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Florida’s primaries have many pain points for Jews. Here are 5 races to watch
(JTA) — As an exhausting primary season begins to wind down, voters in Florida, the last remaining big state yet to hold its primaries, head to the polls Tuesday with several races on the Jewish community’s radar.
The conservative state is home to large numbers of Jews, including a growing number of Jewish emigres from more liberal enclaves, and features several marquee matchups on both sides of the aisle. The state has faced some political turmoil, including last-minute Republican-led redistricting that could hurt the chances of some pro-Israel Jewish Democrats at a moment when such figures are an endangered species in the U.S. House.
On the GOP side, the right’s civil war between hardline pro-Israel figures and a growing crop of white nationalist-adjacent Israel skeptics will be laid bare in multiple races.
Here are some of the storylines for Jews to watch for on Florida’s ballot:
The ‘groyper’ governor’s race
No other low-polling candidate this cycle has grabbed as much attention as James Fishback, the former investment banker running for governor in Florida.
Despite consistently trailing his rival, U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, in the GOP primary, Fishback has raised concern among both Jewish conservatives and party elites. He has embraced online far-right figures including Nick Fuentes, the white nationalist and antisemitic influencer, and uses memes and coded phrases such as “goyslop” to court Fuentes’s “groyper” movement of young men who spread irony-laced antisemitic talking points online.
Asked earlier in the campaign about “goyslop,” a term that refers to low-quality food supposedly promoted by Jewish elites, Fishback told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency he employed it in a speech “because it’s funny. Get a life.”
Much of Fishback’s campaign has focused on the youth vote, fueling concerns that antisemitism could be a building block of the next generation of the right. His college campus visits have boasted high turnout, and young Republican groups that have hosted him have themselves been criticized for antisemitic behavior.
Few analysts expect Fishback to win the primary. His campaign has been mired by scandal and odd behavior, and Donalds, the Trump-endorsed frontrunner, leads most polls by comfortable margins. But Fishback is polling in the double digits in some recent analyses of likely voters from polling outlets including Cygnal, which also has him outpacing two other establishment candidates, and primary polling in Michigan and Wisconsin that turned out to be inaccurate further complicates the prognosis.
Even a reasonably strong performance from Fishback, particularly among the youth vote, would be met with alarm in some Jewish conservative corners.
A Jew who insults Muslims takes on a rival who insults Jews
Elsewhere in Florida’s Republican field, tensions between rising antisemitic and anti-Islamic sentiment within the party are mounting.
U.S. Rep. Randy Fine, the incumbent in the state’s deep-red 6th District, has prompted considerable ire on Capitol Hill for comments denigrating Muslims — including comparing them to dogs — and saying that Gazans should “starve away” until the Israeli hostages were released. As a hardline pro-Israel voter who also wears a kippah on the House floor, Fine has made his Judaism central to his political identity, making him a litmus test for both the right and organized Jewry.
Some of that ire has made it back to his home district, where Fine is facing primary challenger Dan Bilzerian, a celebrity poker player and Instagram influencer who routinely promotes antisemitic conspiracy theories. He has said he wants to “kill Israelis,” has called Fine a “fat Jew” and called antisemitism “a made-up term.” He has further claimed that Israel “wanted Oct. 7 to happen” and called reports of Hamas raping victims that day “bull—t.” Bilzerian has spent at least $1 million of his own money on the race.
The primary has been marked by inflammatory rhetoric and personal attacks. Fine responded to Bilzerian’s entry into the race by declaring that “we don’t want Armenians to be able to serve in Congress” (Bilzerian is Armenian), prompting anger from Armenian-American groups.
Last week a Fine campaign sign was defaced with a swastika, an act condemned by the Anti-Defamation League and other Jewish groups. In a release, Fine accused Bilzerian’s supporters of having painted the swastika, a charge Bilzerian has denied and labeled “the most jew move of all time.”
On Friday, Fine’s campaign said the candidate had referred Bilzerian to federal investigators for allegedly receiving unreported campaign donations from China. Bilzerian’s pitch to voters heavily centers around antisemitism: “District 6 understands the jewish problem,” he wrote on social media over the weekend, accompanied by pictures of his campaign stops.
Some Jewish groups, including the American Jewish Committee, have condemned Fine’s rhetoric on Gaza and other matters. He still receives support from AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, as well as the Republican Jewish Coalition, whose PAC has given his campaign thousands of dollars this cycle, according to federal election filings. In recent days, Republican leaders including House Speaker Mike Johnson — who had declined to condemn Fine’s earlier remarks about Muslims and dogs — have condemned Bilzerian’s antics as antisemitic.
The combined presence of Bilzerian and Fishback on the ballot is leading at least one GOP group to lump them together as similar threats. The Front Line, a Republican PAC aligned with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and formed with the goal of curbing antisemitism within the party, released an ad during the World Cup that attacked them both.
In the ad, which was generated with artificial intelligence, the two candidates are shown hosting a party with media personalities Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, Democratic Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, the pro-Palestinian group Code Pink and Iranian clerics who cut a giant cake made to look like a crossed-out Israeli flag.
One pro-Israel Dem faces a left-wing challenger…
Rep. Jared Moskowitz, one of the most pro-Israel Democrats in Congress, is finding himself in a familiar predicament this election cycle: fending off an anti-Zionist democratic socialist.
Activist Oliver Larkin is running against Moskowitz for the seat in the state’s 25th District, which is about 25% Jewish and is considered a toss-up in November after being redrawn this year. Moskowitz currently represents the 23rd District, which covers much of the same ground.
Moskowitz has outraised his challenger 11-to-1, according to local media estimates, and has refused to debate him. He has the support of AIPAC, which has raised at least $667,000 for him, according to analyses of federal campaign reports.
He also has a groundswell of Jewish support in the district, even from some unlikely corners: The rabbi of a large Orthodox synagogue in Boca Raton has encouraged his congregants to change their voter registrations from Republican to Democrat in order to cast votes for Moskowitz.
Polling from Moskowitz-aligned firms has shown him with a considerable lead, while a poll from a Larkin-aligned outlet this month put the two in a statistical dead heat.
Moskowitz has also outright accused Larkin of fomenting antisemitism, telling the South Florida Sun Sentinel editorial board in a letter that his opponent “has embraced the support of individuals and organizations that have repeatedly trafficked in antisemitic rhetoric and hostility toward the Jewish community.”
Moskowitz has also claimed that Larkin is “running against me solely on my religion.” The Sun Sentinel board rated Moskowitz’s claim “demonstrably untrue” and, in an unusual move, said it would not endorse him for reelection after he declined a joint interview with Larkin. The paper decried what it described as Moskowitz’s “lack of respect for voters.”
But Larkin’s own language has alarmed some Jews, including his labeling of modern-day Israel as a “religious supremacist” country and his call for Israel to become a “secular” state. Asked by Fox News if he supports selling defensive weapons to Israel, Larkin responded, “I do not make a distinction between offensive and defensive weaponry.” A rally he and other progressive candidates were scheduled to participate in with Palestinian-American Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan on Friday was moved at the last minute after the venue, citing Jewish leaders’ concerns over Tlaib’s anti-Israel rhetoric, cancelled.
Larkin has denied charges of antisemitism and spoken positively about Judaism on the campaign trail. In a statement to JTA, his campaign said he would advocate for “the liberation of Jewish South Floridians and Jewish people the world over from antisemitism,” and said an arms embargo on Israel should be “the minimum standard for anyone claiming to support democracy.”
He also has the support of Jewish figureheads on the anti-Zionist left. Author and trans activist Abby Stein was among a group of progressive figures who hosted a fundraiser for him in Brooklyn earlier this month.
… while another faces a redistricting controversy
Things once seemed simpler for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, an establishment Jewish Democrat and former chair of the Democratic National Committee who has comfortably served in Congress since 2004 from a safe blue seat.
But after a late GOP-led redistricting push in Florida earlier this year, prompted by President Donald Trump’s demands for Republicans to redraw their districts to help them hold the House, Wasserman Schultz’s future is suddenly a lot less certain.
Instead of the district she has represented for decades and which many Democratic observers believed she could still win despite the gerrymandering, the congresswoman decided to run in the neighboring 20th — a heavily Black district that for three decades has been represented by a Black lawmaker.
And Wasserman Schultz’s primary opponents, including a former congresswoman facing a federal fraud trial and 2 Live Crew rap star “Uncle Luke” Campbell, aren’t happy she’s gunning for the seat. Critics accuse Wasserman Schultz of carpetbagging and say her decision to run in an easier seat will harm Black representation in government. Campbell has said her decision to run would harm Black-Jewish relations.
Even congressional leaders normally in Wasserman Schultz’s corner have balked at her decision. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries withheld an endorsement in the race, citing what he called the “sensitivities of the moment.”
Florida’s third Jewish Democratic mainstay in the House, Rep. Lois Frankel, is facing her own primary challenge in a new district — though in her case, the boundaries are similar to her old district. Frankel, a staunch Israel supporter, will have to defeat progressive challenger Victoria Doyle, a retired attorney. The close resemblance to her old district and lack of substantive groundswell support behind Doyle likely means Frankel will retain the party’s nomination.
Besides redistricting, Wasserman Schultz and Frankel, as with other institutional Democrat figures, are also facing a voter base unhappy with the party’s status quo. This year the state’s LGBTQ+ Democratic Caucus withheld endorsements in both races, despite Wasserman Schultz’s and Frankel’s historically good relationships with the caucus. Rep. Jared Moskovitz, meanwhile, did receive the caucus’s endorsement.
DSA vs. Soviet refugee in Dem Senate primary
Democrats haven’t held a U.S. Senate seat in Florida since 2019. But in a midterm environment expected to favor the party, the state could prove pivotal, and the primary to replace former Sen. Marco Rubio is putting one of the party’s biggest division points — “socialist” branding — in the spotlight.
The frontrunner for the nomination, retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, is a Kyiv-born Jewish refugee from the former Soviet Union. Vindman, whose twin brother is a congressman in Virginia, attained broader name recognition during the first Trump administration, when he publicly testified about a controversial phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Vindman’s opponent is state Rep. Angie Nixon, who, in contrast to her opponent’s family history of fleeing from socialism, recently joined the Democratic Socialists of America. Nixon has made noise in her party for pushing pro-Palestinian legislation on the state level — including a push, less than a month after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in Israel, for “de-escalation and cease-fire in the state of Israel and occupied Palestine.”
Nixon has campaigned alongside Oliver Larkin, as well as far-left elected figures in the party including Tlaib, and her pro-Palestinian positions are a big point of worry for some Jewish figures. But in a state with high numbers of voters, particularly Latinos, who have fled socialist or Communist regimes, it’s the candidates’ associations with the “S”-word that may prove the deciding factor.
Vindman has far outraised Nixon to date, and leads in the scant polling that has been conducted so far. A July poll from the University of North Florida, however, suggests that Nixon fares slightly better against the Republican nominee, appointed Sen. Ashley Moody.
Joseph Strauss contributed reporting.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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