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Synagogues are joining the ‘effective altruism’ movement. Will the Sam Bankman-Fried scandal stop them?
(JTA) — A few years ago, Adam Azari was frustrated over how little he could do to alleviate suffering in the world with his modest income as a writer and caretaker for people with disabilities.
He kept thinking about a set of statistics and ideas he had encountered during his graduate studies in philosophy. For example, he remembered reading that for the price of training a guide dog for the blind in the United States, one could prevent hundreds of cases of blindness in the developing world.
This hyper-rational way of thinking about doing good was called effective altruism, and it was growing into a movement, known as E.A. for short. Some proponents were even opting to pursue lucrative careers in finance and tech that they otherwise might not have chosen so they would have more money to give away.
Azari, meanwhile, had become a believer who was stuck on the sidelines. Then, one day, he had what he calls a “personal eureka moment.” Azari would return to his roots as the son of a Reform rabbi in Tel Aviv and spread the word of E.A. across the Jewish denomination and among its millions of followers.
“It suddenly hit me that the Reform movement has this crazy untapped potential to save thousands and thousands of lives by simply informing Jews about effective giving,” he recalled.
He badgered his father, Rabbi Meir Azari, and, for a moment, thought of becoming a rabbi himself. But he abandoned the idea and focused on pitching E.A. to the Reform movement’s international arm, the World Union for Progressive Judaism. Azari found an ally in WUPJ’s president, Rabbi Sergio Bergman, and the organization soon decided to sponsor his efforts, paying him a salary for his work.
Over the past year, Azari’s Jewish Effective Giving Initiative has presented to about 100 rabbis and secured pledges from 37 Reform congregations to donate at least $3,000 to charities rated as the most impactful by E.A. advocates and which aid poor people in the developing world. Per E.A. calculations, it costs $3,000 to $5,000 to save a single life.
“Progressive Judaism inspires us to carry out tikkun olam, our concrete action to make the world better and repair its injustices,” Bergman said. “With this call we not only do what the heart dictates in values, but also do it effectively to be efficient and responsible for saving a life.”
This charitable philosophy appears to be gaining traction in the Jewish world just as one of the figures most associated with it, who happens to be Jewish, has become engulfed in scandal.
Sam Bankman-Fried built a cryptocurrency empire worth billions, amassing a fortune he pledged to give away to causes such as artificial intelligence, combatting biohazards and climate change, all selected on criteria developed by the proponents of effective altruism.
A few weeks ago, Bankman-Fried’s fortune evaporated amid suspicions of financial misconduct and revelations of improper oversight at his company, FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange that was worth as much as $32 billion before a run of withdrawals ultimately left it illiquid. The situation has drawn comparisons to the implosion of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, and authorities investigating the situation have said Bankman-Fried could face criminal penalties over his role.
In the wake of FTX’s collapse, Bankman-Fried has suggested that his embrace of E.A. was insincere, a tactic to bolster his reputation.
But Azari and the organizer of another initiative, a growing reading and discussion group called Effective Altruism for Jews, are undaunted and don’t believe the scandal should taint the underlying principles of the movement.
“Whether you call it E.A. or just directly donating to global health and development, it doesn’t matter,” Azari said. “The basic idea is to support these wonderful charities, and I don’t think the FTX scandal changes any of that. Malaria nets, vitamin A supplements and vaccine distribution are still super cost-effective, evidence-based ways of helping others.”
Azari added that he has had several meetings with rabbis since the news about Bankman-Fried broke and that no one has asked him about it.
“I don’t think people are making the connection,” he said. “And to me, there is no connection between us and FTX.”
When talking to rabbis about why E.A. would make a good fit with their congregation’s charitable mission, Azari cites the Jewish value of tikkun olam, a mandate to “repair the world” often used to implore people to care for others. He explains that donating to charities with a proven track record is a concrete way to fulfill a Jewish responsibility.
That kind of thinking proved attractive to Steven Pinker, the prominent Harvard psychologist, who has endorsed Azari’s initiative. In a recorded discussion with Azari and others last year, Pinker recalled his Reform upbringing, which included Hebrew school, summer camp and synagogue services.
“The thing I remember most is how much of my so-called religious education was like a university course in moral philosophy,” Pinker said. “We chewed over moral dilemmas.”
As an adult, Pinker returned to Jewish teachings on charity and, in particular, those of the medieval philosopher Maimonides, examining these ideas through the lens of E.A. He began to wonder about the implications of Maimonides’ focus on evaluating charity based on the motives of the donor. That focus, he concluded, doesn’t always lead to the best outcomes for the beneficiary.
“What ultimately ought to count in tzedakah, in charity, is, are you making people better off?” he said.
Also on the panel with Azari and Pinker was the man credited with authoring the foundational texts upon which E.A. is built. Peter Singer, who is also Jewish and whose grandfather died in the Holocaust, teaches bioethics at Princeton. Starting in the 1970s, Singer wrote a series of books in which he argues for a utilitarian approach to ethics, namely, that we should forgo luxuries and spend our money to save lives. The extremes to which he has taken his thinking include suggesting that parents of newborn babies with severe disabilities be permitted to kill them.
From Bankman-Fried to Singer, the list of Jews who have either promoted E.A. or lead its institutions is long. With their estimated fortune of $11.3 billion, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife Cari Tuna have eclipsed Bankman-Fried as the wealthiest Jews in the field. There’s also popular philosopher Sam Harris and New York Times columnist Ezra Klein, who have each dedicated episodes of their podcast to the topic.
The website LessWrong, which defines itself as “a community blog devoted to refining the art of rationality,” is seen as an important early influence; it was founded by Eliezer Yudkowsky, an artificial intelligence researcher who grew up in a Modern Orthodox household but does not identify religiously as a Jew anymore. Two other Jews, Holden Karnofsky and Elie Hassenfeld, left the hedge fund world to establish GiveWell, a group whose research is considered the premier authority on which charities are deserving of E.A. donations.
The prevalence of Jews in the movement caught the attention of E.A. enthusiast Ben Schifman, an environmental lawyer for the federal government in Washington, D.C. About two years ago, Schifman proposed creating a group for like-minded individuals in hope of helping grow the movement. In an online post, he laid out the history of Jewish involvement and wrote a brief introduction to the topic of Judaism and charity.
Today, Schifmam runs a group called Effective Altruism for Jews, whose main program is an eight-week fellowship involving a reading and discussion group with designated facilitators. Schifman said about 70 people spread across 10 cohorts are currently participating. There’s also a Shabbat dinner program to bring people together for informal meetings with funding available for hosts.
Participants discuss how ideas that are popular in E.A. might relate to Jewish traditions and concepts, and also brainstorm ways to popularize the movement in the wider Jewish community, according to Schifman.
“There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit with regards to the Jewish community and sharing some of the ideas of Effective Altruism, like through giving circles at synagogues or, during the holidays, offering charities that are effective,” Schifman said in an interview that took place before the Bankman-Fried scandal broke.
Asked to discuss the mood in the community following the collapse of Bankman-Fried’s company and an affiliated charity, FTX Future Fund, Schifman provided a brief statement expressing continued confidence in his project.
He said, “While we’re shocked by the news and our hearts go out to all those affected, as an organization EA for Jews isn’t funded by FTX Future Fund or otherwise connected to FTX. We don’t expect our work will be impacted.”
Even if Schifman and Azari are right that their movement is robust enough to withstand the downfall of a leading evangelist, a debate remains about what impact E.A. can or should have on philanthropy itself.
Andres Spokoiny, president and CEO of the Jewish Funders Network, wrote about the question with skepticism in an article published more than two years ago. He argued against “uncritically importing the values and assumptions” of effective altruists, whose emphasis on the “cold light of reason” struck him as detached from human nature.
In a recent interview, Spokoiny echoed similar concerns, noting that applying pure rationality to all charitable giving would mean the end of cherished programs such as PJ Library, which supplies children’s books for free to Jewish families, that may not directly save lives but do contribute to a community’s culture and sense of identity.
He also worries that too strong a focus on evidence of impact would steer money away from new ideas.
“Risky, creative ideas don’t tend to emerge from rational needs assessments,” he said. “It requires a transformative vision that goes beyond that.”
But Spokoiny also sounded more open to E.A. and said that as long as it does not try to replace traditional modes of philanthropy, it could be a useful tool of analysis for donors.
“If donors want to apply some of E.A. principles to their work, I’d say that is a good idea,” he said. “I am still waiting to see if this will be a fad or buzzword or something that will be incorporated into the practice of philanthropy.”
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Jewish and Muslim leaders avoided the hardest interfaith topic for years, and now face a ‘massive fault line’
It’s been a quarter century since a wave of distrust and violence against Muslims swept across America in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. But in some pockets of New York City and across the U.S., Jewish neighbors extended a hand of friendship and an interfaith movement was reborn.
Dialogues turned into dinners. Dinners spawned theatrical collaborations. Collaborations turned out volunteers to feed the homeless and sent interfaith teams to Capitol Hill.
Still, as the Palestinian uprising known as the Second Intifada continued to unfold in the Middle East, even the most promising partnerships avoided the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“We deliberately parked it on the side,” said Daisy Khan, the former executive director of American Society for Muslim Advancement and founder of the Women’s Islamic Initiative. “We called it the elephant in the room that none of us could handle.”
Now, 25 years after the terrorist attacks that inspired a movement, leaders realize that silence was a critical mistake.
As this year’s Jewish High Holidays, a time of remembrance and repentance, begin at sundown on the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, American Jewish leaders are reflecting on mistakes made and words they wish they could take back, confronting rising antisemitism, and along with their longtime Muslim partners, asking: Where do we go from here?
“Rosh Hashanah is known as Yom Hazikaron, the day of remembrance,” said Rabbi Joshua Davidson of Manhattan’s Temple Emanu-El, adding that remembrance usually refers to the hope that God will remember the covenant with the Jewish people. “When you talk about a day of remembrance, you also talk about the experiences that have shaped us into who we are. 9/11 certainly is an experience that has shaped us into who we are. Anyone who lived in New York is forever changed by that day.”
Interfaith bridge-building
On Sept. 11, 2001, Davidson was a young associate rabbi at another Manhattan institution, Central Synagogue. Feeling otherwise helpless that morning as the towers fell, he headed straight to the nearby mosque on 55th Street to assure his Muslim neighbors that they would not be judged by the actions of the terrorists – his instinct born from years of interfaith dialogue already underway.
The same instinct led President George W. Bush to the Islamic Center of Washington D.C., a week later to proclaim, “Islam is peace.” But that perspective did not prevail in all corners.
Prominent evangelical figures condemned Islam as “evil and wicked.” Mosques were set ablaze, and the Justice Department in the three months after the attacks labeled nine murders as “possible hate crimes.” Despite the community’s fear, the term “Islamophobia” was not widely embraced, as if it was a product of Muslims’ imaginations.
“So many American Muslims were experiencing the anxiety that President Bush recognized right away,” Davidson told the Forward. “So 9/11 crystallized for many the importance of the work of interfaith bridge building … We can learn from one another. When the world becomes complicated and your own community is in jeopardy or is being targeted, you realize how valuable it is to have those friendships.”
Those existing friendships and the ground rules that had sustained them laid the foundation for the aftermath of Sept. 11 and propelled many individuals and groups working behind the scenes to publicly counter what seemed to be an anti-Muslim zeitgeist. While the previous approach to interfaith work had been intimate Shabbat dinners, Ramadan iftars, and discussion groups, the new approach involved rallies, live performances and large-scale programs.
On the morning of Sept. 12, Israeli cellist Udi Bar-David called someone with whom he had collaborated a few times – Majid Alsayegh, an Iraqi-born Muslim engineer and architect in Philadelphia. Determined to offer a constructive response, they formed a team and in Spring 2002 launched a nonprofit for creative intercultural exchanges.
“Because of the tensions of Muslim and Jewish, Arabic and Jewish communities, because of the violence, we felt we needed to speak up and do more,” Alsayegh told the Forward, “to help them understand that dialogue in many forms, including music, is much more powerful than shooting each other.”
Seeking to help audiences listen with less anger, more empathy, artists from B’nai Jeshurun, a synagogue on New York’s Upper West Side, teamed up with Methodists and Muslims to present hard truths gathered from more than 100 New Yorkers. The project titled “Same Difference” later became a documentary.
In the years that followed, connections became more purposeful and direct. In 2008, Rabbi Marc Schneier’s Foundation for Ethnic Understanding launched an annual Weekend of Twinning, which paired scores of synagogues and mosques to explore the parallels and similarities within their traditions. It also enabled them to compare notes about the discrimination each faced as religious minorities and band together to fight the hatred that targeted both.
Khan cherishes the time she spent in synagogues and the friendships she formed there.
“We had such deep ties and such deep relations we weren’t afraid to go to bat for one another,” Khan said. “I think those relationships have even served us to this day.”
‘A massive fault line’
Still, cracks began to show. In 2010, Khan and her husband at the time, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, proposed Cordoba House, a mosque and community center in Lower Manhattan. Modeled after JCCs across the country and named for a city in Spain that once had been a center of peaceful coexistence, the proposed facility would offer prayer space, a wedding venue and a swimming pool.
Opponents focused on the location: two blocks from Ground Zero. Many Jewish leaders endorsed the project. Abe Foxman, longtime leader of the Anti-Defamation League, did not.
“We believe that in this place of tragedy and pain and anguish … if you want to heal, the best way to heal is not to do it in your face.”
Foxman, who died in May, never apologized for his remarks, but his successor Jonathan Greenblatt later acknowledged “we were wrong, plain and simple.”
In 2011, when U.S. Congressman Peter King of New York, then-chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, held hearings on Capitol Hill denouncing the radicalization inside American mosques, Jewish friends showed their support by helping to organize a “Today, I am Muslim too” rally in Times Square.
Those shows of solidarity grew throughout the years. Jewish partners joined crowds at airports to protest the Trump administration’s executive order on immigration. Congregations helped each other pick up the pieces when their houses of worship or sacred sites came under assault. But the tougher conversation, probing where people stood on the Middle East conflict and why, remained largely untouched.
As anyone in interfaith relations or diplomacy of any kind will tell you, constructive conversations are best had before there’s a crisis. That crisis arrived on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel, murdering more than 1,200 and taking 250 hostages. The war that followed in Gaza sparked virulent protests on college campuses and in public squares and a spike in antisemitic incidents. It also created a chasm of grief too deep and wide for many partnerships to survive.
“When Gaza happened, it created a massive fault line,” Khan said. “For Jews it reinforced existential fears about Jewish safety. For the Palestinians: ‘It’s our existential thing too. We feel we’re getting wiped out.’”
But because many conversation partners had for years avoided the hardest topic of all, they missed the opportunity to feel the emotional weight carried on both sides and hold that tension. When the grief, trauma and fear of Oct. 7 was thrust upon them, leaders could not adequately navigate the emotional landscape to offer moral clarity or comfort, Khan said.
“We could have called for calm,” she said. “We could’ve said that human loss is terrible. We could’ve said a lot of things that calmed people down. None of that happened. It became very tribal.”
Laboratory phase
Dr. Ari Gordon, director of Muslim Jewish Relations for American Jewish Committee, said while some Muslim partners have walked away from their joint advocacy work, some have stayed in touch. Khan and Alsayegh remain committed and hold out hope that their Muslim peers will return and give it another try.
“Everyone in this space has had the hits they’ve taken after Oct. 7,” Gordon said. “Relationships are a long-term investment. They can take dips and turns, peaks and valleys. On a personal level, as a friend, you have the right to say I want to engage with a person. I don’t want to. As a Jewish community we have a responsibility to keep our doors open.”
But it’s also important to keep the trajectory and time frame in perspective. The transformation of Christian-Jewish relations offers a lesson in that regard.
“The idea that a relationship can be beset by conflict and challenges for centuries and undergo transformation,” he said, “is one that I carry in my mind all the time.”
Gordon calls the past 25 years a “laboratory phase of Muslim-Jewish relations.” The Shabbat dinners, iftars, dialogue groups, coalitions, concerts – they all have fortified a connective tissue between American Muslims and Jews that did not exist 25 years ago.
“That trust may not have been sufficient to meet the stress test of October 7 and the continued war but it was definitely there and it didn’t go away,” he said. “After October 7 we entered a new phase and it’s one where we’re not going to go back to the way it used to be, but build something new.”
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Documentary alleging Israel committed wanton killing in Gaza gets standing ovation in Venice
(JTA) — TEL AVIV – A documentary presenting testimony from Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers who say the IDF knowingly killed large numbers of civilians during its campaign in Gaza got a 25-minute standing ovation Thursday at the Venice Film Festival.
“NAZA,” directed by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, is based on interviews conducted over three years with 24 Israeli soldiers who said they were involved in Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, most of them intelligence officers whose work was carried out remotely. The soldiers describe surveillance, target selection and decisions about strikes in which civilians were expected to be killed. Their identities are concealed in the film.
The Israeli army has rejected the claims in the film, saying it rips out of context conventional military considerations about the utility of hitting a target versus the collateral damage that might ensue.
Shot at night on rooftops in Tel Aviv, the 80-minute documentary takes its name from the Hebrew military acronym for “collateral damage,” referring to civilians expected to be killed in an attack on a military target.
Abraham and Szor, whose previous film about Israel’s West Bank occupation, “No Other Land,” spurred controversy as well, wrote in the left-wing Israeli publication +972 on Thursday that NAZA focuses on what they describe as a military system in which anticipated civilian deaths were calculated in advance rather than being unintended consequences of strikes. In their account, one intelligence officer describes knowingly authorizing strikes on homes occupied by families, telling the filmmakers, “You understand that the objective is to destroy.”
The Israel Defense Forces has denied the central allegation underlying the documentary: that it has deliberately killed civilians as a matter of policy.
Responding to his 2024 investigation into the military’s use of an AI-powered database, known as Lavender, that generates potential targets for attacks, the IDF in April of that year said Hamas embeds its operatives and military assets among civilians, while Israel directs its attacks at military targets and operatives and conducts strikes under the rules of war that include proportionality and taking precautions to avoid civilian deaths.
The IDF said every target requires an assessment of the expected military advantage and likely collateral damage, and that the military does not carry out a strike when the anticipated civilian harm would be excessive in relation to the military advantage. The IDF also said intelligence systems described in the film are tools for analysts rather than autonomous target-selection systems and that targets require independent human review before any action is taken. “The IDF outright rejects the claim regarding any policy to kill tens of thousands of people in their homes,” the military said in a statement carried by The Guardian.
“We made this film for one simple reason,” the directors wrote in +972. “We understood that testimonies from officers and soldiers in the army that annihilated Gaza — those who conducted the surveillance, who calculated how many innocent people were likely to be killed in each house, and who repeatedly gave the green light to bomb entire families — would make it even harder to deny the crimes.”
The filmmakers said some of the soldiers’ accounts were so urgent that they published them before completing the documentary in a series of investigations for +972, its Hebrew-language sister site Local Call and The Guardian. The Guardian also produced NAZA with James Wilson, while Jonathan Glazer, the director of the Oscar-winning movie about Nazi-era complicitness, “The Zone of Interest,” served as an executive producer. Glazer’s remarks in his speech in the 2024 Oscars linking his film’s thesis to Israel’s conduct in Gaza spurred a backlash.
In a statement published by the Venice Film Festival, Abraham and Szor said the documentary allowed them to examine “not only the words being said but also those that are not said, the silence.” The filmmakers said the documentary was intended not only for international audiences but “inward, toward Israeli society.”
“NAZA” is the only documentary among the 21 films competing for the Golden Lion at Venice this year. One of the seven jurors deciding the festival’s main prizes is Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania, whose Gaza film “The Voice of Hind Rajab” won the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize last year. The film, about a young Palestinian girl killed during the war, received what was then a record 23-minute standing ovation at its premiere. Israel has said it is investigating the circumstances of Rajab’s killing.
Haggai Matar, executive director of +972 Magazine and co-director of Local Call, wrote on X ahead of the premiere that the soldiers’ testimonies were ones “every Israeli must hear.” His post drew angry responses from some Israeli users.
One X user, who said he had fought in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, wrote that there “was never a situation in which entire families were killed intentionally” and accused Matar of “slandering hundreds of thousands of fighters” who had risked their lives to minimize harm to noncombatants. Another accused those promoting the film of joining those who “slander Israel around the world,” adding: “Shame.”
“NAZA” reunites Abraham and Szor after “No Other Land,” which they made with Palestinian filmmakers Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal and which won the Academy Award for best documentary feature in 2025. Adra and Ballal said they were blacklisted and barred from entering Israel while making that film, so the four filmmakers carried out their joint editing in Masafer Yatta, a cluster of villages in the West Bank.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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A case pitting Indiana Jews against an abortion ban heads back to court
(JTA) — A landmark legal battle to determine whether Jewish women have a religious right to an abortion entered a critical new stage in Indiana.
The state Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Thursday in a case that began with a local Jewish group’s 2022 religious freedom challenge to Indiana’s near-total abortion ban. The state is appealing a permanent blocking of the ban that a lower court imposed in March.
The arguments, held in Indianapolis, explored a legal theory that the state’s abortion ban impedes Jews’ religious freedom because many interpretations of Jewish law prioritize the life of the mother over that of the fetus.
The case, one of the recent major challenges based on Jewish law to an abortion ban, could carry significant ramifications for how the American legal system weighs Jewish religious rights against conservative Christian doctrine, which strongly opposes abortion.
Indiana was one of several states to pass severe abortion restrictions following the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning its 1972 Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing the right to an abortion. Separately, Christian groups and businesses have prevailed in national religious freedom cases determining whether they can be compelled to pay for contraception that can be used to perform abortions, arguing doing so violates their religious views.
But Kenneth Falk, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, argued before the court Thursday that it was the abortion bans that curtailed the free exercise of religion. “Under Jewish law, the human life does not begin until the first breath,” said Falk, who argued the case on behalf of Hoosier Jews for Choice, a group formed explicitly to challenge the state’s abortion law, as well as two anonymous plaintiffs. While liberal Jewish denominations are generally permissive of abortion, Orthodox scholars offer more mixed interpretations.
In response to a question by Chief Justice Loretta Rush about what the state should do “further along in a pregnancy,” Falk said, “I don’t think anyone is going to be advocating for abortions of a viable fetus.”
In his arguments, Falk compared the Jewish women’s standing to what he called “secular” exceptions to the abortion ban in cases of rape or incest.
“What is the reason for allowing these secular exceptions, but not a religious exception?” Falk asked the justices. He also referred to permitted religious exceptions to healthcare laws in other cases, including vaccine mandates.
In March, a judge in the Marion County Superior Court ruled in favor of Hoosier Jews for Choice, permanently blocking the state’s near-total abortion ban in cases where it would “substantially burden their religious exercise.”
That ruling prompted the appeal from the state now under consideration, as well as conservative backlash, with Republican Indiana Sen. Jim Banks calling for the judge’s impeachment.
“Our nation’s long tradition of respect for religious exercise has never been understood to encompass a right to intentionally destroy human life, any more than a right to abusively punish children,” Indiana Solicitor General James Barta argued before the state Supreme Court on Thursday.
Barta otherwise largely sidestepped the Jewish group’s religious arguments in his own presentation. Instead he insisted that the plaintiffs did not have proper standing because they were not actively seeking abortions themselves, though one is hoping to get pregnant but worried about getting proper care if an abortion were required.
Their case, Barta insisted, was “purely hypothetical.”
A similar argument briefly prevailed in Kentucky in 2024, when a judge threw out a religious freedom lawsuit brought by three Jewish mothers against that state’s abortion law. The plaintiffs, the judge said in that case, lacked standing because none of them were currently pregnant. One of the plaintiffs, who was considering a pregnancy via in vitro fertilization, was allowed to appeal the case, which resulted in a partial victory this May when a judge struck down part of Kentucky’s abortion ban — related to a definition of when human life begins — as unconstitutional.
Many mainstream and progressive-leaning Jewish organizations, including the National Council of Jewish Women, the Anti-Defamation League and representatives of the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements, are supporting Hoosier Jews for Choice and have signed onto briefs on the group’s behalf in court.
In a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the NCJW noted that questioning from the justices Thursday “appeared to focus on more procedural matters,” rather than “the merits of the case.” Yet Darcy Hirsh, the group’s vice president of government relations and advocacy, said she was “hopeful” the court would rule in the Jewish groups’ favor.
“No individual should be forced to abandon their religious beliefs in order to comply with a narrow, Christian belief of when life begins,” Hirsh said.
A representative for the state of Indiana did not return a JTA request for comment following the oral arguments.
There are also Jews on the other side of the debate. The Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty, a legal advocacy group, has filed amicus briefs in support of the state.
“From a theological perspective, it’s hard to say what is the single Jewish teaching on abortion,” Josh Blackman, an attorney with the coalition and professor at the South Texas College of Law, told JTA following the oral arguments.
Blackman added that, of all major religions, Judaism has “the strongest basis for the right to terminate a pregnancy.” But, he said, Jewish groups should be mindful of advocating for a system “where Jews in Indiana can have an abortion but Catholics cannot.”
“At a time when there’s growing hostility between people on the right and Jews, I”m not sure this is the best use of Jewish resources,” Blackman said. “This could actually backfire in significant ways.”
There is no timeline for when the state Supreme Court might issue a decision on the case.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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