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Why a liberal Zionist rabbi isn’t taking to the streets over Israel’s judicial reform plan
(JTA) — Israel’s 75th anniversary was supposed to be a blowout birthday party for its supporters, but that was before the country was convulsed by street protests over the right-wing government’s proposal to overhaul its judiciary. Critics call it an unprecedented threat to Israel’s democracy, and supporters of Israel found themselves conflicted. In synagogues across North America, rabbis found themselves giving “yes, but” sermons: Yes, Israel’s existence is a miracle, but its democracy is fragile and in danger.
One of those sermons was given a week ago Saturday by Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch of Manhattan’s Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, expressing his “dismay” over the government’s actions. Hirsch is the former head of ARZA, the Reform movement’s Zionist organization, and the founder of a new organization, Amplify Israel, meant to promote Zionism among Reform Jews. He is often quoted as an example of a mainstream non-Orthodox rabbi who not only criticizes anti-Zionism on the far left but who insists that his liberal colleagues are not doing enough to defend the Jewish state from its critics.
Many on the Jewish left, meanwhile, say Jewish establishment figures, even liberals like Hirsch, have been too reluctant to call out Israel on, for example, its treatment of the Palestinians — thereby enabling the country’s extremists.
In March, however, he warned that the “Israeli government is tearing Israeli society apart and bringing world Jewry along for the dangerous ride.” That is uncharacteristically strong language from a rabbi whose forthcoming book, “The Lilac Tree: A Rabbi’s Reflections on Love, Courage, and History,” includes a number of essays on the limits of criticizing Israel. When does such criticism give “comfort to left-wing hatred of Israel,” as he writes in his book, and when does failure to criticize Israel appear to condone extremism?
Although the book includes essays on God, Torah, history and antisemitism, in a recent interview we focused on the Israel-Diaspora divide, the role of Israel in the lives of Diaspora Jews and why the synagogue remains the “central Jewish institution.”
The interview was edited for length and clarity.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: You gave a sermon earlier this month about the 75th anniversary of Israel’s founding, which is usually a time of celebration in American synagogues, but you also said you were “dismayed” by the “political extremism” and “religious fundamentalism” of the current government. Was that difficult as a pulpit rabbi?
Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch: The approach is more difficult now with the election of the new government than it has been in all the years of the past. Because we can’t sanitize supremacism, elitism, extremism, fundamentalism, and we’re not going to. Israel is in what’s probably the most serious domestic crisis in the 75-year history of the state. And what happens in Israel affects American Jewry directly. It’s Israeli citizens who elect their representatives, but that’s not the end of the discussion neither for Israelis or for American Jews. At the insistence of both parties, both parties say the relationship is fundamental and critical and it not only entitles but requires Israelis and world Jews to be involved in each other’s affairs.
For American Jewry, in its relationship with Israel, our broadest objective is to sustain that relationship, deepen that relationship, and encourage people to be involved in the affairs in Israel and to go to Israel, spend time in Israel and so forth, and that’s a difficult thing to do and at the same time be critical.
American Jews have been demonstrating here in solidarity with the Israelis who have been protesting the recent judicial overhaul proposals in Israel. Is that a place for liberal American Jews to make their voices heard on what happens in Israel?
I would like to believe that if I were living in Israel, I would be at every single one of those demonstrations on Saturday night, but I don’t participate in demonstrations here because the context of our world and how we operate is different from in Israel when an Israeli citizen goes out and marches on Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv. It’s presumed that they’re Zionists and they’re speaking to their own government. I’m not critical of other people who reach a different perspective in the United States, but for me, our context is different. Even if we say the identical words in Tel Aviv or on West 68th Street, they’re perceived in a different way and they operate in a different context.
What then is the appropriate way for American Jews to express themselves if they are critical of an action by the Israeli government?
My strongest guidance is don’t disengage, don’t turn your back, double down, be more supportive of those who support your worldview and are fighting for it in Israel. Polls seem to suggest that the large majority of Israelis are opposed to these reforms being proposed. Double down on those who are supportive of our worldview.
You lament in your book that the connections to Israel are weakening among world Jewry, especially among Jewish liberals.
The liberal part of the Jewish world is where I am and where the people I serve are by and large, and where at least 80% of American Jewry resides. It’s a difficult process because we’re operating here in a context of weakening relationship: a rapidly increasing emphasis on universal values, what we sometimes call tikkun olam [social justice], and not as a reflection of Jewish particularism, but often at the expense of Jewish particularism.
There is a counter-argument, however, which you describe in your book: “some left-wing Jewish activists contend that alienation from Israel, especially among the younger generations, is a result of the failures of the American Jewish establishment” — that is, by not doing more to express their concerns about the dangers of Jewish settlement in the West Bank, for example, the establishment alienated young liberal Jews. You’re skeptical of that argument. Tell me why.
Fundamentally I believe that identification with Israel is a reflection of identity. If you have a strong Jewish identity, the tendency is to have a strong connection with the state of Israel and to believe that the Jewish state is an important component of your Jewish identity. I think that surveys bear that out. No doubt the Palestinian question will have an impact on the relationship between American Jews in Israel as long as it’s not resolved, it will be an outstanding irritant because it raises moral dilemmas that should disturb every thinking and caring Jew. And I’ve been active in trying to oppose ultra-Orthodox coercion in Israel. But fundamentally, while these certainly are components putting pressure on the relationship between Israel and Diaspora Jewry, in particular among the elites of the American Jewish leadership, for the majority of American Jews, the relationship with Israel is a reflection of their relationship with Judaism. And if that relationship is weak and weakening, as day follows night, the relationship with Israel will weaken as well.
But what about the criticism that has come from, let’s say, deep within the tent? I am thinking of the American rabbinical students who in 2021 issued a public letter accusing Israel of apartheid and calling on American Jewish communities to hold Israel accountable for the “violent suppression of human rights.” They were certainly engaged Jews, and they might say that they were warning the establishment about the kinds of right-wing tendencies in Israel that you and others in the establishment are criticizing now.
Almost every time I speak about Israel and those who are critical of Israel, I hold that the concept of criticism is central to Jewish tradition. Judaism unfolds through an ongoing process of disputation, disagreement, argumentation, and debate. I’m a pluralist, both politically as well as intellectually.
In response to your question, I would say two things. First of all, I distinguish between those who are Zionist, pro-Israel, active Jews with a strong Jewish identity who criticize this or that policy of the Israeli government, and between those who are anti-Zionists, because anti-Zionism asserts that the Jewish people has no right to a Jewish state, at least in that part of the world. And that inevitably leads to anti-Jewish feelings and very often to antisemitism.
When it came to the students, I didn’t respond at all because I was a student once too, and there are views that I hold today that I didn’t hold when I was a student. Their original article was published in the Forward, if I’m not mistaken, and it generated some debate in all the liberal seminaries. I didn’t respond at all until it became a huge, multi-thousand word piece in The New York Times. Once it left the internal Jewish scene, it seemed to me that I had an obligation to respond. Not that I believe that they’re anti-Zionist — I do not. I didn’t put them in the BDS camp [of those who support the boycott of Israel]. I just simply criticized them.
Hundreds of Jews protest the proposed Israeli court reform outside the Israeli consulate in New York City on Feb. 21, 2023. (Gili Getz)
You signed a letter with other rabbis noting that the students’ petition came during Israel’s war with Hamas that May, writing that “those who aspire to be future leaders of the Jewish people must possess and model empathy for their brothers and sisters in Israel, especially when they are attacked by a terrorist organization whose stated goal is to kill Jews and destroy the Jewish State.”
My main point was that the essence of the Jewish condition is that all Jews feel responsible one for the another — Kol yisrael arevim zeh bazeh. And that relationship starts with emotions. It starts with a feeling of belongingness to the Jewish people, and a feeling of concern for our people who are attacked in the Jewish state. My criticism was based, in the middle of a war, on expressing compassion, support for our people who are under indiscriminate and terrorist assault. I uphold that and even especially in retrospect two years later, why anyone would consider that to be offensive in any way is still beyond me.
You were executive director of ARZA, the Reform Zionist organization, and you write in your book that Israel “is the primary source of our people’s collective energy — the engine for the recreation and restoration of the national home and the national spirit of the Jewish people.” A number of your essays put Israel at the center of the present-day Jewish story. You are a rabbi in New York City. So what’s the role or function of the Diaspora?
Our existence in the Diaspora needs no justification. For practically all of the last 2,000 years, Jewish life has existed in the Diaspora. It’s only for the last 75 years and if you count the beginning of the Zionist movement, the last 125 years or so that Jews have begun en masse to live in the land of Israel. Much of the values of what we call now Judaism was developed in the Diaspora. Moreover, the American Jewish community is the strongest, most influential, most glorious of all the Jewish Diasporas in Jewish history.
And yet, the only place in the Jewish world where the Jewish community is growing is in Israel. More Jewish children now live in Israel than all the other places in the world combined. The central value that powers the sustainability, viability and continuity of the Jewish people is peoplehood. It’s not the values that have sustained the Jewish people in the Diaspora and over the last 2,000 years, which was Torah or God, what we would call religion. I’m a rabbi. I believe in the centrality of God, Torah and religion to sustain Jewish identity. But in the 21st century, Israel is the most eloquent concept of the value of Jewish peoplehood. And therefore, I do not believe that there is enough energy, enough power, enough sustainability in the classical concept of Judaism to sustain continuity in the Diaspora. The concept of Jewish peoplehood is the most powerful way that we can sustain Jewish continuity in the 21st century.
But doesn’t that negate the importance of American Jewry?
In my view, it augments the sustainability of American Jewry. If American Jews disengage from Israel, and from the concept of Jewish peoplehood, and also don’t consider religion to be at the center of their existence, then what’s left? Now there’s a lot of activity, for example, on tikkun olam, which is a part of Jewish tradition. But tikkun olam in Judaism always was a blend between Jewish particularism and universalism — concern for humanity at large but rooted in the concept of Jewish peoplehood. But very often now, tikkun olam in the Diaspora is practiced not as a part of the concept of Jewish particularism but, as I said before, at the expense of Jewish particularism. That will not be enough to sustain Jewish communities going into the 21st century.
I want to ask about the health of the American synagogue as an institution. Considering your concern about the waning centrality of Torah and God in people’s lives — especially among the non-Orthodox — do you feel optimistic about it as an institution? Does it have to change?
I’ve believed since the beginning of my career that there’s no substitute in the Diaspora for the synagogue as the central Jewish institution. We harm ourselves when we underemphasize the central role of the synagogue. Any issue that is being done by one of the hundreds of Jewish agencies that we’ve created rests on our ability as a community to produce Jews into the next generation. And what are those institutions that produce that are most responsible for the production of Jewish continuity? Synagogues, day schools and summer camps, and of the three synagogues are by far the most important for the following reasons: First, we’re the only institution that defines ourselves as and whose purpose is what we call cradle to grave. Second, for most American Jews, if they end up in any institution at all it will be a synagogue. Far fewer American Jews will receive a day school education and or go to Jewish summer camps. That should have ramifications across the board for American Jewish policy, including how we budget Jewish institutions. We should be focusing many, many more resources on these three institutions, and at the core of that is the institution of the synagogue.
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Mahmoud Khalil’s reassurances are bad for Jews but even worse for Palestinians
In his recent interview with the Forward, prominent Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil attempted to address claims that he’s an antisemite, that he supports Hamas, and that as a leader of Columbia’s anti-Israel encampments he helped foster hostility towards Jewish students and Jews generally.
Khalil says he’s offended by such claims, but by refusing to say whether Hamas deliberately targeted civilians on Oct. 7, confirmed by both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, how is he not providing coverage for Hamas?
The Forward attempts to present Khalil as a pragmatic moderate. But someone who can’t confirm what human rights investigators documented about the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust is not offering any real reassurances. Instead, he is only offering a performance.
An even deeper problem with Khalil is not what it means for Jews, but what it does to Palestinians. I say this as someone who has spent time in places where the gap between rhetoric and reality gets people killed.
In 2004, I was a young Marine officer building one of the first successful Iraqi military units in Iraq’s restive Al Anbar Province. My soldiers were mostly Shia, and many bore marks of torture from Saddam Hussein’s prisons, including scars and missing fingers.
One evening, I was watching the news with my Iraqi officers. We watched reports of Israeli tanks pushing into Gaza. I braced for anger and protests and was shocked when they started cheering for the Israelis. One of them quickly explained to me that Saddam had used the Palestinian cause to distract from his own atrocities at home. His support and alliance with Yasser Arafat and other Palestinian leaders was not out of solidarity, but rather as a tool of domestic control. My Iraqi soldiers had paid the price.
After leaving the Marines I visited Lebanon and Jordan, while working to help many of our translators we had left behind. During these visits, I walked through Sabra and Shatila, where Lebanese militias massacred hundreds, possibly thousands, of Palestinian civilians in 1982. I visited refugee camps in Jordan, not tents but cities, brick and mortar, generations deep, people suspended in political amber while the leaders who claimed to speak for them extracted whatever use they could.
During these visits, it was hard not to conclude that Palestinian suffering had been prolonged not only by Israel, but by a regional order that finds Palestinian statelessness useful. Khalil’s vision fits that order perfectly. It offers Palestinians justice in theory, but in reality only guaranteeing them decades of more suffering and tragedy. The people who benefit are not Palestinians in Gaza, but those who have built careers on book deals, speaking fees and endowed chairs on a cause they have no interest in resolving.
The brutal, tragic, and awful reality is that there is not a nation-state on Earth, maybe other than Iceland, that was not created through conflict and displacement. Throughout the Americas, it was the catastrophe that befell indigenous peoples, swept aside by European settlers over centuries of conquest and disease. Most of Western Europe’s borders hardened through revolution and the violent suppression of regional identities. Poland was erased from the map for a hundred years, then reconstituted after two world wars through mass population transfers that uprooted millions. The partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 displaced 15 million people and killed up to two million more. China’s borders were drawn through civil war, revolution, and the subjugation of non-Han peoples.
Every post-Ottoman Arab state, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, was created by European colonial powers drawing lines through tribal and sectarian areas with indifference to the consequences that are still felt today. The entire modern state system is built on this foundation: land taken, people moved, suffering endured, and eventually, when both sides accepted finality, a durable peace.
Either Khalil believes every nation-state on Earth should be dismantled, or he is applying a standard that exists for Jews and Jews alone. The entire Arab world spans 13 million square kilometers and nearly half a billion people. Israel barely covers 22,000 square kilometers and is home to only 7 million Jews. Khalil doesn’t call for the dissolution of Jordan, doesn’t demand China answer for Tibet, or push for the right of return for millions of Hindus and Muslims displaced by the partition of India and Pakistan. He saves that demand for the one Jewish state on Earth, a nation smaller than New Jersey, surrounded by a region that has tried to destroy its people repeatedly. This is antisemitism through the vocabulary of liberation.
Look at where peace has actually come from. Northern Ireland’s Troubles killed thousands over 30 years, a conflict soaked in ancient grievance, religious identity, and competing claims to land and sovereignty that each side considered non-negotiable. It ended not when one side achieved its maximal demands, but when the Good Friday Agreement gave both communities something short of victory and something better than war. Unionists did not get the permanent British Ulster they wanted. Republicans did not get the unified Ireland they had fought and died for. They got a future. In the Balkans, a decade of wars that produced ethnic cleansing, mass atrocity, and the worst European violence since World War II finally yielded to exhaustion and the hard work of partition and negotiated borders. The map that emerged was not just. It was livable. That distinction, between justice as an absolute and peace as a possibility, is the one Khalil refuses to make.
Khalil’s vision has been tried, in different forms and different names, for 70 years. It has not produced peace. It has produced more of exactly what he says he wants to end.
The only path forward is the one he refuses: two peoples, two states, a future neither side fully wants, but both can live with. Everything else is a jobs program for people who profit from the conflict, paid for in Palestinian lives.
His reassurances are hollow to Jews. They are fatal to Palestinians.
The post Mahmoud Khalil’s reassurances are bad for Jews but even worse for Palestinians appeared first on The Forward.
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Jonah Hill’s cancel culture dramedy makes an antisemitism exception — all about Kanye
Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, is having an interesting April.
Fans are hailing his new album Bully as a return to form. (Critics are more mixed.) He reportedly made $33 million from two sold-out shows in Los Angeles, but he was also banned from entering the U.K. owing to a pressure campaign by Jewish groups over a scheduled headlining performance at the Wired music festival, even as the artist, who recently attributed his antisemitic behavior to a brain injury and bipolar disorder, offered to have “meet and listen” sessions with the Jewish community.
On top of this mixed reception, add a movie premiere. Ye has a memorable cameo in Jonah Hill’s new AppleTV+ film The Outcome, about an A-list actor’s teshuvah tour. And that moment has something to say about what to do with the artist’s outbursts.
Hill’s character, a crass crisis lawyer named Ira, assembles a dream team to protect his client, Reef Hawk (Keanu Reeves), who is awaiting the release of an incriminating video. The nature of this video is unknown beyond its potential to derail his comeback after a five-year sabbatical to treat a secret heroin addiction. Among Reef’s potential defenders are a Gloria Allred-style lawyer (Laverne Cox), a Black minister legendary for his work on civil rights (Roy Wood Jr.) and an ambassador from the Asian-American community (Atsuko Okatsuka). Ira notes someone missing from the mix, one “Moshe, from the Antisemitism Committee,” perhaps a poorly-named stand-in for the ADL.
“We ran the numbers,” Ira’s assistant says by way of explanation. “It turns out that hating Jews doesn’t negatively affect a person’s career. In fact, it could help.”
And we cut to a black-and-white headshot of Ye, occupying the whole screen.
Hill explained this choice in an interview with TMZ, saying the scene wasn’t just there to score a cheap shot at Ye, who publicly (and compellingly) apologized in an ad in the Wall Street Journal in January.
“In the midst of all this Jew stuff, he did Instagram a picture of me in the 21 Jump Street poster,” Hill recalled. “And he said something along the lines of ‘I don’t hate Jews anymore because I love Jonah Hill.’”
“Me and him got no beef,” Hill continued.” I just put that in there like, ‘Yo, you’re gonna f—ing put the 21 Jump Street poster up there and say you don’t hate Jews anymore. That’s pretty wild. I’m gonna put a picture of you saying that like, hating Jews helps your career.’”
Clearly a sight gag and a bit of an inside joke. But is it true?
Running my own numbers, and not even accounting for this last week of ups and downs, Ye took a major hit to his net worth when he lost his Adidas partnership, backsliding all the way from billionaire to mere multimillionaire. Fans still turn up for Ye, and some even seem to like what I’ll call his Hitler catalogue. That said, it’s hard to imagine him making a full recovery, once again gracing the stage at the Grammys or headlining a major festival or getting a shot at the Super Bowl halftime show.
The difference between Ye’s transgression and that of others is instructive. There’s plenty of arguable antisemitism in the case of celebrities whose pro-Palestinian advocacy has crossed the line into something unsavory. Rappers Bob Vylan of “death, death to the IDF” fame and Kneecap, who chanted “up Hamas, up Hezbollah,” come to mind. They have had their own brushes with cancellation and been denied visas because of their antics — but also strong support from those who believe they are simply speaking up for Palestinians. The ascendancy of Israel conspiracies, echoing age old canards, has recently produced an odd coalition between pundits on the far-left and far-right, and hasn’t put a dent in their audience.
(Hill, though Jewish, was accused of dabbling in Jewish stereotypes his last film, You People, and he will likely get some flack for this movie, both for his character — a kind of grubby fixer who calls his client “Bubbie” — and for a joke where Man’s Search for Meaning is referred to as “the most lit Holocaust book.”)
Even in this environment, Ye is toxic for mainstream consumption, because when he went “death con 3” on the Jews, his words had no agenda beyond delusion-fueled animus about Jewish control of the media. Ye’s awareness of the Middle East was best expressed on the occasion he used a fish tank net and Yoo-hoo bottle to represent the Israeli prime minister. Vylan and Kneecap’s slogans are more subtle and plausibly deniable than one of Ye’s latest tracks, literally called “Heil Hitler.”
There was no hedging it, try as Candace Owens might. It was Jew Hate Classic, the original recipe. And it wasn’t, in the case of Mel Gibson, a pattern that emerged over relatively wide gaps of time with only one incident widely known to the general public. It was an endless, often marathon torrent of invective and odd tangents care of an unmedicated bipolar insomniac. It went on for months. Then died off. Then came back swinging in the form of an album the concept of which could, charitably, be defined as spiritually Hitlerian.
The sheer concentration of vitriol seems like proof that the outburst was the result of a manic episode, which could afford the rapper some grace. Instead, he now lives in a liminal space between relevance and punchline. This strain of antisemitism doesn’t boost careers — yet — but the man behind it can sell out stadiums in spite of it.
All the while, the question of what to do with Ye’s mental health, and how it factors into his cancellation makes him a conundrum, even if it should by rights be a better excuse than Mel Gibson’s squad car in vino veritas. (Gibson is mentioned in the film, in the context of a poppers-related Weekend at Bernie’s scenario, not his own scandal.) Before we render a judgment, we need commitments he won’t repeat his tirades and so continue to influence looksmaxxers, incels and their overlapping Venn Diagram of Nazi revivalists.
Hill’s belief that Ye’s antisemitic streak was good for business is symptomatic of something fundamentally off with the director’s treatment of cancel culture. It feels out-of-touch even — or maybe because — it draws from experience. Hill himself was the victim of cancellation some years ago, when his ex leaked texts in which he weaponized “therapy talk.” Hill’s project, with a cast that includes Reeves, Van Jones, Martin Scorsese, Drew Barrymore and a rare appearance from Cameron Diaz, is itself proof of how not all cancellations are created equal or indefinite.
The Outcome is in tension with itself, part Hill’s version of Don Henley’s “Dirty Laundry” and Seth Rogen’s The Studio, part earnest penance that may or may not be coming from the director-writer himself.
One of the lines, delivered by Reef’s reality star mother (soap opera icon Susan Lucci), as a crew films their rapprochement for Bravo, sums the film up nicely: “Just because it’s performative doesn’t mean it’s not the truth.” We’ll have to take her word for it.
When it comes to Ye, there is some truth that antisemitism alone can’t crater a career — with the exception of lesser talents, it never could. We need not wonder how it has affected Ye’s popularity with Hill, who cited him on TMZ as “probably the greatest artist whoever lived.”
As Ira departs the film, we see his bumper sticker: “Honk if you can separate the art from the artist.” Hill would blow out the horn, and hopes you might too.
Jonah Hill’s The Outcome debits April 10 on AppleTV+.
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Dollar Struggles to Rebound as Fragile US-Iran Ceasefire Keeps Markets Wary
U.S. $100 bills. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
A fragile calm reigned across currency markets on Thursday as traders kept their eyes fixed on whether the ceasefire between the US and Iran would hold, a day after its announcement sent the dollar tumbling across the board.
The deal appeared to be on thin ice, as Israel bombed more targets in Lebanon, and there was no sign Iran had lifted its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which has caused the worst disruption to global energy supplies in history.
Iranian negotiators were expected to set off later on Thursday for Pakistan for the first peace talks of the war, but Tehran said there would be no deal as long as Israel was striking Lebanon.
President Donald Trump said all US ships, aircraft, and military personnel would stay in place in and around Iran until it fully complied with a deal.
The uncertainty left currency markets on edge.
The euro was up 0.17 percent at $1.1683. It had gained 0.6 percent on Wednesday, but retreated late in the day having touched a one-month high of $1.1721 earlier in the session.
Sterling similarly was 0.21 percent higher at $1.342, after gaining 0.77 percent on Wednesday, but retreating from as high as $1.348.
Meanwhile, the Japanese yen lost some ground, with the dollar up 0.3 percent at 159.055 yen, having briefly dropped below 158 on Wednesday.
With the Strait of Hormuz closed, “the entire ceasefire remains tenuous,” said Derek Halpenny, head of research global markets EMEA at MUFG. But, he added, “while the US dollar has rebounded, the moves in general have been modest.”
He said the fact that further talks scheduled in Pakistan were still going ahead was keeping any retracement of Wednesday’s moves in check.
Elsewhere, new personal spending data released on Thursday showed that US inflation increased as expected in February and likely rose further in March amid the war with Iran, a trend that is expected to discourage the Federal Reserve from cutting interest rates for a while.
The personal consumption expenditures price index climbed 0.4% after an unrevised 0.3 gain in January, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis said on Thursday.
Japan’s consumer confidence worsened in March for the first time in three months, a government survey showed on Thursday, adding to a recent string of data pointing to the potential economic hit from the Middle East war, which would complicate the Bank of Japan’s rate-hike decision. The yen showed little reaction to the data.
Speaking in parliament, BOJ Governor Kazuo Ueda said real interest rates were clearly negative and were keeping the country’s financial conditions accommodative.
Other currencies were also broadly steady. The Australian dollar was 0.15 percent higher at $0.7054, while the New Zealand dollar was 0.46 percent higher at $0.585. In cryptocurrencies, bitcoin was last down 0.97 percent at $70,680.