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Learning Hebrew brought me closer to Judaism — and alienated me from Israel
(JTA) — Speaking to the media in the United States before and after his latest election as Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu reassured American Jews and other supporters of Israel that their widely expressed fears of the undemocratic nature of the new Israeli governing coalition were overblown and would not in fact come to pass.
Netanyahu told the New York Times that he was still at least notionally committed to a peace deal with the Palestinians and told journalist Bari Weiss that policy would be determined by him, and not cabinet ministers like the self-described “proud homophobe” Bezalel Smotrich and convicted criminal Itamar Ben-Gvir, or the haredi Orthodox parties.
Then he returned to Israel, and promptly tweeted, “These are the basic lines of the national government headed by me: The Jewish people have an exclusive and indisputable right to all areas of the Land of Israel. The government will promote and develop settlement in all parts of the Land of Israel — in the Galilee, the Negev, the Golan, Judea and Samaria.” Netanyahu was asserting absolute Jewish sovereignty over the entirety of the West Bank, with no room for Palestinian statehood — as those politicians want and as his many American Jewish critics feared he would do.
That last tweet, despite reflecting the official position of Netanyahu’s newly inaugurated government, did not attract nearly as much attention in U.S. media as Netanyahu’s previous press tour. Because unlike Netanyahu’s fluent English-language interviews with numerous American press organizations, this tweet was in Hebrew — a language in which only 22% of American Jews possess an even minimal degree of fluency.
Like many non-Orthodox American Jews, I was once one of those other 78%. I was brought up attending a Reform synagogue, and I learned how to read enough Hebrew phonetically to have a bar mitzvah ceremony, reciting my Torah portion by rote memorization. I learned the aleph bet, and a few basic words here and there, but not much more. If I read Torah or Talmud at all, it was entirely in English translation.
But unlike many non-Orthodox American Jews, I became interested in learning Hebrew as an adult, as part of a broader interest in learning more about Jewish history, and I enrolled in courses starting in college to study Biblical, Mishnaic and modern Hebrew. Eventually, after years of study, I enrolled in a doctoral program in Jewish history at the University of Chicago, where I had to pass a rigorous Hebrew proficiency exam as a prerequisite to advance to doctoral candidacy status.
In many ways, this should have made me an ideal American Jew. After all, numerous commentators have opined on the need for more American Jews to learn Hebrew, to bring us closer to both Israeli Jewish culture and to Jewish history as a whole. As one Israeli educator stated, “Once you have Hebrew, all Israeli culture can be injected into your life.”
A wide array of American Jewish philanthropists and charities have identified funding Hebrew language education for American Jews as a priority. They should see someone like me — who went from knowing barely enough Hebrew to get through my bar mitzvah to now reading Haaretz each day in Hebrew — as a success story.
Except that this call for more American Jews to learn Hebrew often comes with an embedded political assumption: that if more American Jews learned to read and speak Hebrew, we would feel more closely linked to Israel and reverse the declining support for Israel among young American Jews.
There’s even a claim that American Jews do not have the right to criticize Israel without being able to follow Israeli political discussions in the original language. Daniel Gordis, of Shalem College in Jerusalem, complained that left-wing American Jewish journalist Peter Beinart should not be taken seriously as a commentator on Israeli affairs, as Beinart apparently “cannot read those [Hebrew] newspapers or Israeli literature until it is translated.”
The assumption is clear: If American Jews do not know Hebrew, we cannot be connected to the state of Israel, nor can we truly understand the Israeli politics we might wish to opine about. If we learned Hebrew, one Israeli-American advocate wrote, we would “be more united and support Israel in spectacular ways.”
Except that in my case, the exact opposite happened. As I learned more Hebrew, I saw how Israeli Jewish politicians often spoke in different terms in English and in Hebrew, tailoring their appeals for different audiences. Netanyahu’s recent sojourn to the United States is only one example. Take Ayelet Shaked, who sounded moderate notes to English-speaking audiences on a trip to Britain, while also telling Hebrew audiences that the “Jewish” character of Israel should supersede the notion of “equality.”
Of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with code-switching. Politicians of all kinds do that. But the fact that some Israeli politicians think they have to sound more moderate in English than in Hebrew is telling. And when I opened myself up to what some Israeli politicians say in Hebrew, such as when Netanyahu falsely spread allegations of Arabs stealing votes in the last Israeli elections, something he did in Hebrew and not in English, or when new coalition partner Itamar Ben-Gvir put up a billboard reading, “May our enemies be gone” in Hebrew next to the pictures of three Israeli left-wing politicians, two Palestinian and one Jewish, it opened my eyes to a lot of aspects of Israeli politics that some American Jews would rather not hear.
So yes, it would be good for more American Jews to learn Hebrew. It would be a positive step for more American Jews to engage more heavily with Jewish culture and history. I certainly have no regrets about my time spent studying Hebrew.
But we should be honest about what the effects of that Hebrew language education would be. It might not be to simply make more American Jews “defend Israel” against its detractors. It might mean a more honest engagement with Israeli politics as they truly are, rather than how they are presented abroad to English-speaking audiences. And for some of us, that might even push us further away.
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The post Learning Hebrew brought me closer to Judaism — and alienated me from Israel appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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A New Jersey congregation was already falling apart. Then came Oct 7.
Partly Strong, Partly Broken
By Nathaniel Popkin
New Door Books, $19.95, 249 pages
When Rabbi Adinah Feld returns to her reform congregation in New Jersey after a nearly week-long trip to Israel, she discovers two crises have occurred in her absence: The roof of the synagogue has collapsed after a heavy storm and the Muslim teenager, Fami, who helps clean the shul is in the hospital after a savage attack by a local white supremacist.
Things only further devolve from here in Partly Strong, Partly Broken, a new novel from author and former Wall Street Journal critic Nathaniel Popkin. The fictional synagogue of Temple Beth Israel fractures — metaphorically and physically — in the month leading up to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
Feld is presented as the archetypal neo-liberal American rabbi. Her trip to Israel, we quickly learn, consisted of participating in the pro-democracy protests and pining for her Palestinian ex-girlfriend, whom she first met nearly two decades earlier while living in Israel. Once she’s home, her attention is split between trying to fix the storm-damaged roof, respond to the attack, and finally launch the Hebrew learning center she’s been advocating for the synagogue to have for years.
But at every turn there’s a challenge: The incompetent and combative building manager can’t seem to get the roof fixed; some congregants believe Feld’s concern for Fami is proof she cares more about Muslims than Jews; a wealthy board member wants his name on the Hebrew center and his project manager in charge — a woman who takes personal offense when Feld invites the local Imam to join tashlich.
Many readers will probably see their own congregation in the fictional Temple Beth Israel, especially if they’ve served on a synagogue’s board or committee. But for those who have avoided seeing behind the administrative curtain of a synagogue, the complex power dynamics might come as a shock.
Popkin deftly captures a stark truth: The attack on Oct. 7 and the subsequent war didn’t create the divisions over Israel in the Jewish community; it exposed tensions that were already there. This reality, combined with a prophecy from the Book of Daniel — Daniel tells Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar that his dream of a statue with feet made of iron and clay reveal that the foundations of his kingdom were “partly strong, and partly broken.” — is the inspiration for the book’s title.
For some, the fact that Jews have always been divided over Israel may not seem like a particularly insightful observation. But after Oct. 7, there was a lot of shock and outrage among the Jewish community at the wide range of opinions in their communities. As Partly Strong shows, when synagogues avoid talking about Israel to mitigate conflict (or please wealthy donors, as Feld does in the book), they don’t prevent conflict — they just make disagreements and tough discussions about Israel taboo and volatile.
In Popkin’s novel, the conflict comes to a head less than a week before Oct. 7 at a whiskey-fueled book talk where a Jewish comparative literature professor presents his claims about understanding the role of epigenetics and inherited trauma in the book of Genesis. The conversation quickly turns towards trauma among Israelis and Palestinians — a subject the drunken congregants are not prepared to discuss civilly.
As startlingly realistic as Popkin’s story is, the strong narrative occasionally feels disrupted by verbose, overexplanatory writing (“She’d better go find Fami right away and give her the silver chain with the hamesh pendant, the palm-shaped amulet of protection that is usually called by its Arabic name, hamsa, and sometimes the hand of Fatima, for the daughter of Mohammed”) and a surfeit of subplots. At one point, readers are pulled away from the main story for a brief and sappy sex scene between two teenage Hebrew school instructors on a faux polar bear rug (the girl is described as “dessert” and the boy is described as an “Olympic eater”). While it was impressive to see what seemed like half of my home congregation represented, at some point it becomes too much to keep track of all the characters, big or small, and all their issues.
We don’t actually see how the characters respond to Oct. 7 — the book ends with a small group of them huddled together watching the first reports of the attack on a television. We’re left to imagine how Feld and her congregation will handle the aftermath — although readers have probably already lived it themselves.
The post A New Jersey congregation was already falling apart. Then came Oct 7. appeared first on The Forward.
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Hezbollah Pays Steep Price in Battle to Reverse Its Fortunes
Workers remove a coffin with a body from temporary graves and prepare for transport for a funeral ceremony of four Hezbollah fighters and two civilians, amid a temporary ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel, in Tyre, southern Lebanon, April 26, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Marko Djurica/File Photo
Hezbollah has paid a heavy price for going to war with Israel on March 2: Israel has occupied a chunk of southern Lebanon, displaced hundreds of thousands of its Shi’ite Muslim constituents and killed as many as several thousand of its fighters, according to previously unreported casualty estimates from within the group.
The move has brought severe political consequences, too. In Beirut, opposition has hardened to its status as an armed group, which domestic rivals see as exposing Lebanon to repeated wars with Israel.
In April, Lebanon’s government held face-to-face talks with Israel for the first time in decades, a decision Hezbollah firmly opposed.
However, more than a dozen Hezbollah officials told Reuters they see a chance to reverse deteriorating fortunes by aligning with Tehran in its war with Israel and the United States. The group, founded by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in 1982, opened fire two days into the conflict, which began with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28.
The group’s calculations are based on the assessment that its participation would force Lebanon onto the agenda of U.S.-Iranian negotiations, and that Iranian pressure can secure a more robust ceasefire than one that took effect in November 2024 following a conflict sparked by the war in Gaza, the officials said.
Hezbollah was mauled in the last war, which killed its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, along with some 5,000 fighters, and weakened its long-dominant hold over the Lebanese state.
Rearmed with Iranian help, it has used new tactics and drones, surprising many with its capabilities after a fragile 15-month truce during which Hezbollah held fire, even as Israel continued to kill its members.
Hezbollah lawmaker Ibrahim al-Moussawi denied the group was acting on Iran’s behalf when it resumed hostilities, as alleged by opponents. He told Reuters Hezbollah saw a window to “break this vicious cycle … where the Israelis can target, assassinate, bombard, kill, without any revenge.”
He acknowledged losses and damage in southern Lebanon but said “you don’t go into making calculations of how many are going to be killed” when “pride and sovereignty and independence” are at stake.
Hezbollah’s media office said the figure of several thousand fighters killed in the present war was false.
While a US-mediated ceasefire that took effect on April 16 has led to a significant reduction in hostilities, Israel and Hezbollah have continued to trade blows in the south, where Israel maintains troops in a self-declared “buffer zone.”
Yezid Sayigh, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said Hezbollah had “shown more resilience than many thought possible, but that was not a strategic gain in itself.”
“The only thing that will contain Israel is a comprehensive US-Iran deal,” he said. “Without a deal, there’s going to be a lot of pain for everyone. At best, a hurting stalemate.”
GRAVES FRESHLY DUG, AND QUICKLY FILLED
More than 2,600 people have been killed since March 2, around a fifth of them women, children and medics, Lebanon’s health ministry has reported. Its toll does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Three sources, two of them Hezbollah officials, said the ministry’s figures do not include many of the group’s casualties. They said several thousand Hezbollah fighters have been killed, though the group does not have the full picture yet.
In a statement to Reuters, Hezbollah’s media office denied the figures cited by the sources, and that the numbers published by Lebanon’s health ministry included its members killed in Israeli strikes.
One source, a Hezbollah commander, said scores of fighters had gone to the frontline towns of Bint Jbeil and Khiyam intending to fight to the death. Their bodies have yet to be recovered.
In the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut, more than two dozen freshly dug graves were quickly filled with fighters’ bodies in the days after the ceasefire took hold. Simple marble tombstones identify some as commanders, others as fighters.
In one southern village alone, Yater, the council recorded the deaths of 34 Hezbollah fighters.
Lebanon’s Shi’ite Muslim community has borne the brunt of Israel’s attacks, forced to flee into Christian, Druze and other areas, where many blame Hezbollah for starting the war.
Israel has been entrenching its hold over a security zone stretching as far as 10 km (6 miles) into Lebanon and demolishing villages, saying it aims to shield northern Israel from attacks by Hezbollah militants embedded in civilian areas.
An Israeli government official said Hezbollah had abrogated the November 2024 ceasefire by firing on Israeli citizens on March 2. The threat to northern Israel would be eradicated, the official said, adding thousands of Hezbollah militants had been killed, and Israel was steadily destroying the group’s infrastructure.
The Israeli military says Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel since March 2. Israel has announced 17 soldiers killed in southern Lebanon, along with two civilians in northern Israel.
Citing ongoing Israeli strikes, Hezbollah has called the April ceasefire meaningless and continued to attack.
IRAN ‘WILL NOT SELL’ THEIR FRIENDS
A diplomat who has contact with Hezbollah described its decision to enter the war as a big gamble and a survival strategy, saying it felt it needed to be part of the problem so it could be part of an eventual regional solution.
It has yet to be seen if the gamble will pay off.
Tehran has demanded that Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah be included in any deal on the wider war. But US President Donald Trump said last month that any deal Washington reaches with Tehran “is in no way subject to Lebanon.”
A spokesperson for Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry, Tahir Andrabi, referred Reuters to an April 16 statement in which he said peace in Lebanon was essential to the talks it is mediating between the U.S. and Iran.
A Western official said they saw a possibility the US and Iran might eventually reach a settlement that does not address the war in Lebanon.
Asked about this, the US State Department, Iran’s mission to the United Nations in Geneva and Lebanon’s government did not immediately comment.
Hezbollah’s Moussawi said a ceasefire in Lebanon continues to be a top priority for Iran, adding Tehran shares Lebanon’s objectives, including that Israel halt attacks and withdraw from Lebanon. Hezbollah has “full trust in Iran – that the Iranians will not sell their own friends”, he said.
The State Department referred Reuters to an April 27 interview Secretary of State Marco Rubio did with Fox News, in which he said Israel had a right to defend itself against Hezbollah’s attacks, and that he didn’t think Israel wanted to maintain its buffer zone in Lebanon indefinitely.
The United States has urged Israel “to make sure their responses are proportional and targeted,” he said.
When the April 16 ceasefire was announced, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hezbollah’s disarmament would be a fundamental demand in peace talks with Lebanon.
Hezbollah has ruled out disarmament, saying the matter of its weapons is a topic for a national dialogue. Any move by Lebanon to disarm the group by force would risk igniting conflict in a country shattered by civil war from 1975 to 1990.
Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam have sought Hezbollah’s peaceful disarmament since last year. On March 2, the government banned the group’s military activities.
Hezbollah has demanded the government cancel that decision and end its direct talks with Israel.
Lebanese officials have told Reuters they believe direct talks with Israel under the auspices of the US are the best way to secure a lasting ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli troops, as only Washington has enough leverage with Israel to achieve those aims.
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US President Trump Tells Israeli Media: ‘I Studied Iran’s New Proposal, It Is Not Acceptable to Me’
US President Donald Trump arrives to award the medal of honor to Master Sgt. Roderick ‘Roddie’ W. Edmonds, Staff Sgt. Michael H. Ollis, and retired Command Sgt. Maj. Terry P. Richardson during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 02 March 2026.
US President Donald Trump said he has reviewed Iran’s latest proposal and described it as “unacceptable” in an interview with Israeli broadcaster Kan News on Sunday. Trump added that ongoing efforts related to the conflict are “progressing very well,” without providing further details. He also renewed his call for clemency for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, arguing that Israel needs a leader focused on wartime priorities rather than legal matters.