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New Discovery/Max reality show ‘Survive the Raft’ features a Messianic ‘rabbi’ who says ‘I’m Jewish, too’
(JTA) – Even amid the motley crew with whom he is trying to survive at sea, Jonathan Dade’s introduction as a reality TV contestant makes a splash.
“As a Black rabbi who’s also conservative, if we can’t discuss race, religion or politics, I can pretty much never talk,” Dade tells viewers on the new Discovery/Max series “Survive the Raft,” about nine people from diverse backgrounds forced to work together for 21 days at sea.
In the first episode, which premiered Sunday, Dade says he works as “a senior rabbi in a synagogue in Georgetown, Texas.”
Dade explains his biography as one of conversion. “I grew up Christian and a lot of my friends when I was in the Navy were Jewish,” he tells the audience. “And by me listening, I learned and then before you know it, I’m Jewish, too.”
But the photo montage introducing Dade also includes images of him wearing a tallit, a Jewish prayer shawl, while performing a baptism — a Christian ritual.
The juxtaposition had at least one viewer confused. “I was genuinely excited to see the rabbi, so you can imagine my dismay when the little montage showed him performing an obvious baptism,” one Jewish Reddit user wrote after watching the episode. “Do you think the producers didn’t know the difference?”
The viewer was right to be surprised. Dade is actually a Messianic Jew — someone who believes Jesus was the Messiah, a belief that is antithetical to Judaism. His congregation, Messiah Echad, advertises itself as serving “Hebrew Christian, Torah Observant, Messianic Jewish, and Non-Religious Believers.”
Messianic groups often have ties to explicitly Christian organizations, and none of the mainstream Jewish movements consider them Jewish. As with many mainstream Christian denominations, missionary work is part of Messianic practice.
But the distinction between Judaism and Dade’s Messianic faith isn’t made apparent on the show, making Dade the latest example of a Messianic being countenanced as Jewish in public life.
Pictures on Echad Messiah’s Facebook page suggest it is not the first time: He’s posted photos of himself at Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s mansion for Hanukkah parties and a celebration this May of Israel’s 75th birthday, and he can also be seen conducting a public menorah lighting in the center of Georgetown, a small city in central Texas, north of Austin.
A cast image from the Discovery/Max reality show “Survive the Raft.” The series premiered July 30, 2023. (Courtesy of Warner Brothers Discovery)
Messianics are sometimes selected to offer the appearance of Jewish inclusion, which happens with some regularity in politics. For example, Pennsylvania’s Republican gubernatorial candidate concluded his unsuccessful run last year with a Messianic’s performance of a “Fiddler on the Roof” parody.
In one especially prominent incident, Jewish groups were outraged when a Messianic “rabbi” appeared onstage at a campaign rally attended by then-Vice President Mike Pence in 2018 to offer a prayer for the victims of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting.
“There are deep theological differences between Jews and Christians regarding exactly who is a Messiah, what a Messiah should do and even how central a Messiah should be to their traditions,” Ingrid Anderson, associate director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies at Boston University, wrote at the time, explaining why Pence’s selection was so objectionable to many Jews.
Anderson noted that most Messianic Jews consider it part of their mission to evangelize to Jews, a practice that is “very painful and damaging” for Jews because, historically, “Christians did not believe that Jewish scriptures contained truths claimed by another religion.”
Dade, who holds a masters in theology from Colorado Christian University, also unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Georgetown in 2020 and again earlier this year; he said he is preparing another campaign for 2026. During his first campaign local media identified him as a “rabbi”; promotional videos for his congregation identify his wife Melinda Dade as a “Rebbetzin,” a term typically employed in Judaism to refer to the wife of a rabbi. Neither he nor Messiah Echad responded to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency request for comment.
“Survive the Raft” is a “Survivor”-esque show that takes its inspiration from a 1973 social experiment by Mexican anthropologist Santiago Genovés, which itself included an Israeli doctor as one of the ship’s crew. The contestants are described as “nine Americans handpicked to disagree about everything,” and include a hunter, a vegan and a conservative mom shown holding an anti-mask sign.
“We do not comment on the religious beliefs of show participants,” a spokesperson for parent company Warner Brothers Discovery told JTA. Requests for comment to Critical Content, the show’s production company, were not returned.
Georgetown has an actual synagogue: Congregation Havurah Shalom, which follows Reform practices but does not affiliate with any movement. Its co-president, Ellen Silverman, told JTA that Dade is a “lovely person,” but added, “We do not recognize the Messianic congregation as Jewish as they believe in Jesus and Jews do not.”
At the same time, Silverman added, “Rabbi means teacher and Jonathan is a teacher for his congregation.”
Whether and how Dade planned to infuse his Messianic ministry into his “Survive the Raft” appearance may never be known: He (spoiler alert) doesn’t stay on the show long enough for anyone else to drill into his faith. He has an on-camera seizure midway through the first episode and is airlifted to a hospital in Panama. At the end of the episode, the show’s host informs the rest of the cast that Dade won’t be returning to the raft.
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New York Man Sentenced for Firing Shotgun Outside Synagogue
Mufid Fawaz Alkhader. Photo: Screenshot.
US federal law officials on Tuesday announced the sentencing of a man who fired a pump-action shotgun outside the Temple Israel synagogue in Albany, New York to express his anti-Israel views and intimidate Jewish community members.
The perpetrator, 29-year-old Mufid Fawaz Alkhader, committed the offense on Dec. 7, 2023, exactly two months after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, amid preparations for the observance of Hanukkah. According to the US Justice Department, he commuted there via Uber from his residence in Schenectady, a city of the Capital Region that once possessed a thriving manufacturing sector and large middle class. Positioning himself in the front entrance, Alkhader discharged his firearm, purchased illegally, twice “into the air” as he bellowed “Free Palestine.”
His gun jammed on the third attempt, after which he turned his frustration on an Israeli flag pitched in front of the institution, the Justice Department said in a press release announcing the sentencing on Tuesday. Local law enforcement later apprehended Alkhader, but the security incident he precipitated frightened the congregation, causing it to “cancel a planned concert and candle lighting ceremony to celebrate Hanukkah that evening.”
Alkhader ultimately faced several criminal charges — for purchasing an illegal firearm, violating the religious rights of Temple Israel’s worshippers, and wielding a weapon while committing a violent crime. He will serve ten years in lockup and five years of supervised release.
“This shooting, outside of a synagogue on the eve of a Hanukkah celebration, was unfortunately emblematic of the antisemitic violence, rhetoric, and practices that have swept this country over the last few years,” acting US attorney John Sarcone for the Northern District of New York said in a statement. “This year, the Justice Department has emphatically said — through its words and actions — no more. My office, with our law enforcement partners, will do everything within our powers to make sure everyone in the Northern District of New York can exercise their right to practice their religion without fear and violence and hatred.”
Alkhader’s assault on Temple Israel occurred during an unrelenting wave of over 10,000 antisemitic incidents that hit the American Jewish community in the first year after Oct. 7. According to a 2024 report published by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Center on Extremism on the first anniversary of Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel, antisemitic incidents in the US increased 200 percent. Thirty percent of the incidents recorded took place on college campuses and another 12 percent happened during anti-Israel protests. Another 20 percent targeted Jewish institutions, including nonprofit organizations and houses of worship. Of these, 50 percent were bomb threats.
The hatred has carried into 2025.
In June, a gunman murdered two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC, while they exited an event at the Capital Jewish Museum hosted by a major Jewish organization. The suspect charged for the double murder, 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez from Chicago, yelled “Free Palestine” while being arrested by police after the shooting, according to video of the incident. The FBI affidavit supporting the criminal charges against Rodriguez stated that he told law enforcement he “did it for Gaza.”
Less than two weeks later, a man firebombed a crowd of people who were participating in a demonstration to raise awareness of the Israeli hostages who remain imprisoned by Hamas in Gaza. A victim of the attack, Karen Diamond, 82, later died, having sustained severe, fatal injuries.
Another antisemitic incident motivated by anti-Zionism occurred in San Francisco, where an assailant identified by law enforcement as Juan Diaz-Rivas and others allegedly beat up a Jewish victim in the middle of the night. Diaz-Rivas and his friends approached the victim while shouting “F—k the Jews, Free Palestine,” according to local prosecutors.
“[O]ne of them punched the victim, who fell to the ground, hit his head and lost consciousness,” the San Francisco district attorney’s office said in a statement. “Allegedly, Mr. Diaz-Rivas and others in the group continued to punch and kick the victim while he was down. A worker at a nearby business heard the altercation and antisemitic language and attempted to intervene. While trying to help the victim, he was kicked and punched.”
According to the latest data released by the FBI earlier this month, antisemitic hate crimes in the US have been tallying to break all previous statistical records. In 2024, even as hate crimes decreased overall, those perpetrated against Jews increased by 5.8 percent in 2024 to 1,938, the largest total recorded in over 30 years of the FBI’s counting them. Jewish American groups have noted that this surge, which included 178 assaults, is being experienced by a demographic group which constitutes just 2 percent of the US population.
A striking 69 percent of all religion-based hate crimes that were reported to the FBI in 2024 targeted Jews, with 2,041 out of 2,942 total such incidents being antisemitic in nature. Muslims were targeted the next highest amount as the victims of 256 offenses, or about 9 percent of the total.
“As the Jewish community is still reeling from two deadly antisemitic attacks in the past few months, the record-high number of anti-Jewish hate crime incidents tracked by the FBI in 2024 is consistent with ADL’s reporting and, more importantly, with the Jewish community’s current lived experience,” ADL chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt said at the time. “Since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, Jewish Americans have not had a moment of respite and have experienced antisemitism at K-12 school, on college campuses, in the public square, at work, and Jewish institutions.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Arsonists Hurl Firebombs at Russian Synagogue in Second Attack of the Summer
An attempt to set fire to the synagogue in Obninsk, Kaluga Region, Russia. Photo: Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS.
For the second time in just over a year, law enforcement in Russia responded to an attempt to burn down a synagogue in Obninsk, Russia.
The Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS (FJC), which works to represent Jewish communities in former Soviet states, released a statement describing the crime.
“In the night between Aug. 12 and 13, 2025, unknown perpetrators attempted to set fire to the synagogue in Obninsk, Kaluga Region. According to available reports, at least three bottles containing incendiary mixture were thrown at the building, damaging its entrance,” FJC stated. “This is not the first attack on the synagogue. On July 10, 2024, unidentified individuals tried to ignite the building, resulting in a fire that destroyed the internal electrical substation. Police at the time detained two minors in connection with that incident.”
Rabbi Aaron Golovchiner, the synagogue’s leader, said, “Of course, this is an act of antisemitism. There’s no other way to define a second arson attack on a synagogue.”
Recalling the previous attack, Golovchiner said that “last year, police arrested two minors, one of whom was not even eight years old, which we said at the time was implausible without adult involvement.” He explained that as a result, “we believe perpetrators are using children to escape criminal responsibility.” Police arrested two minors in connection with the July 10 arson attempt.
Golovchiner also believes that the failure to achieve accountability for the previous antisemitic act may have motivated those who struck on Tuesday.
On July 18, Russia’s Investigative Committee announced sentences for 135 people who participated in an antisemitic riot in the predominantly Muslim Dagestan region in October 2023. Those convicted received prison terms ranging from six-and-a-half to 15 years.
Russia has maintained close relations with Israel’s arch-foe Iran, announcing a 20-year strategic partnership earlier this year. Since then, Russia has participated in trilateral talks with Iran and China.
In support of its strategic partner, Russia also urged the US not to strike the Islamic republic’s nuclear facilities in June. The two countries participated in joint naval exercises last month too.
On Jan. 25, 2024, the US State Department released a report detailing the long history of Russian governments using antisemitism as a tool in promoting disinformation and spreading propaganda.
“For over a century, Tsarist, Soviet, and now Russian Federation authorities have used antisemitism to discredit, divide, and weaken their perceived adversaries at home and abroad. Today, Kremlin officials and Russia’s state-run or state-controlled media spread conspiracy theories, fueling antisemitism intended to deceive the world about its war against Ukraine. These tactics build on a long tradition of exploiting antisemitism to create division and discontent,” the State Department stated in the report’s introduction.
Explaining the historical depth of Russian antisemitism and its consequences, the report explained that “Russian authorities’ exploitation of antisemitism as a tactic to spread disinformation and propaganda dates back over 100 years. One of the earliest examples of this malign influence activity was the Russian Empire’s Tsarist Security Service’s fabrication of the now infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the early 1900s.”
According to the Anti-Defamation League’s January update to its Global 100 research into antisemitic attitudes by country, 62 percent of Russia’s adult population (71.1 million people) embrace “elevated levels of antisemitic attitudes.” This positions Russia at 84 out of 103 countries surveyed for antisemitism levels (the lower the number, the higher the levels of hate.) The report ranks Russia with the top levels of antisemitism for the Eastern European region.
An analysis from Indiana University’s Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism by its research associate Yaron Gamburg explained how Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to conquer Ukraine had contributed to the surge in anti-Jewish sentiment in Russia.
“Against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine and a series of failures by the Russian army in 2022, antisemitic rhetoric has become an integral part of Russian foreign policy, including elements of distortion and banalization of the Holocaust,” Gamburg wrote in a December 2024 report. “Just days after his statement about Zelensky, Putin publicly used antisemitic rhetoric, this time against prominent Russians of Jewish descent who do not support the war in Ukraine and emigrate to Israel.”
Earlier this year, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a “pure Nazi” and a “traitor to the Jewish people.” Lavrov’s comments resembled previous rhetoric from Putin in 2023, when he called Zelensky a “disgrace to Jewish people.”
As part of its ongoing propaganda campaign to undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty, Russia has relied on such rhetoric and claims invoking the Nazis for decades, insisting that Kyiv has no distinct culture or state and has always been part of Moscow’s “own history, culture, and spiritual space.” For example, in an attempt to justify the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Putin labeled its leaders as “neo-Nazis” and invoked World War II rhetoric, claiming that Russia’s so-called “special military operation” was meant to “de-nazify” the country.
A Tel Aviv University study on global antisemitism in 2024 cast doubt on the full reporting of incidents targeting Jews in Russia.
“In 2024, the SOVA Center for Information and Analysis recorded no acts of antisemitic violence and no acts of antisemitic vandalism, compared to no acts of antisemitic violence and only a single act of antisemitic vandalism in 2023. It is the third straight year that SOVA did not record an antisemitic act of violence,” the researchers stated. “The reliability of these data is questionable, given the current state of oppression and misinformation in Putin’s fascist Russia. For example, a June 2024 terror attack in Dagestan targeted a synagogue, as well as a church, but the incident does not appear in SOVA’s data.”
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Argentina’s Milei Launches $1 Million Isaac Accords Initiative to Strengthen Israel–Latin America Ties
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the signing of MOUs with Argentine President Javier Milei. Photo: Amos Ben-Gershom (GPO)
Argentine President Javier Milei has helped to launch a $1 million initiative, the American Friends of the Isaac Accords (AFOIA), aimed at deepening diplomatic, economic, and cultural ties between Israel and Latin American countries.
On Tuesday, the Genesis Prize Foundation introduced the Isaac Accords, a new project aimed at fostering closer cooperation between Latin American governments and Israel while tackling antisemitism and terrorism.
Milei’s effort is modeled after the Abraham Accords — a series of historic US-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab countries.
“The creation of AFOIA was inspired by President Milei, who received the Genesis Prize for his steadfast support of Israel during one of the most challenging periods in its history,” Stan Polovets, co-founder and chairman of the Genesis Prize Foundation, said in a statement.
“AFOIA is a vehicle to promote Milei’s bold vision and encourage other Latin American leaders to stand with Israel, confront antisemitism, and reject the ideologies of terror that threaten our shared values and freedoms,” he continued.
Argentinian President and 2025 Genesis Prize Laureate @JMilei’s bold “Isaac Accords” vision – mirroring the Abraham Accords – just got a $1M boost from the Genesis Prize! American Friends of the Isaac Accords (AFOIA) – created by The Genesis Prize Foundation – will fund… pic.twitter.com/u5vlmifPYx
— The Genesis Prize (@TheGenesisPrize) August 12, 2025
Earlier this year, Milei was awarded the $1 million Genesis Prize in recognition of his unwavering support for Israel and his commitment to Jewish values during a diplomatic visit to the Jewish state.
A nonprofit organization based in New York, AFOIA will collaborate with local partner groups to promote cooperation in sectors such as water technology, agriculture, cyber defense, fintech, healthcare, and energy. It will initially focus its efforts on Uruguay, Panama, and Costa Rica.
The Genesis Prize Foundation announced it will partner with organizations such as StandWithUs, the Israel Allies Foundation, the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, and Yalla Israel to support the launch of Milei’s initiative.
AFOIA’s first programs will focus on connecting Latin American students and public officials with Israeli innovations, strengthening pro-Israel advocacy networks, training emergency medical teams in Costa Rica, and supporting Christian leaders who foster connections with Israel.
The initiative will also aim to encourage partner countries to move their embassies to Jerusalem, formally recognize Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations, and shift longstanding anti-Israel voting patterns at the United Nations.
Less than a year after the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Argentina became the first Latin American country to designate the Palestinian Islamist group as a terrorist organization, with Paraguay following suit earlier this year.
Danny Danon, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, praised Milei’s latest initiative as “highly admirable” and commended the support provided by the Genesis Prize Foundation.
“The establishment of a Latin America–Israel alliance rooted in shared values and mutual benefit is long overdue,” the Israeli ambassador said in a statement.
“I am pleased to see the Isaac Accords initiative get off the ground and thank President Milei for setting an example for his neighbors in the region,” he continued.