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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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Iran, Israel and Hitler’s gun are all on the ballot in key primaries in Texas and NC on Tuesday
(JTA) — With war in Iran breaking out just as two crucial states hold their primaries, a new PAC opposing pro-Israel spending will have its first big opportunity to flex its muscles among Democrats.
Meanwhile, a gun influencer with a penchant for Hitler jokes and Nazi symbols stands a chance to ride a scandal-ridden GOP primary all the way to Congress.
What unfolds Tuesday at the polls in North Carolina and Texas could reverberate throughout the midterms calendar as American Jews are facing unprecedented levels of political alienation from both sides of the aisle. Here’s what to watch for.
In North Carolina, Israel morphs from asset to liability
Pro-Israel election spending was already poised to be a hot topic this year even before the joint American and Israeli-led strikes in Iran reignited the issue of the Middle East. Nowhere is that more true than in North Carolina’s 4th Congressional District.
In the state’s densely populated Research Triangle region, incumbent Rep. Valerie Foushee has sworn off support from pro-Israel lobbying giant AIPAC — which spent more than $2 million for her in 2022. She has taken additional steps to distance herself from Israel, including refusing to attend Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s congressional address in 2024.
But her main opponent, Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam, is the one who is associated with criticism of Israel.
American Priorities PAC, which formed last month specifically to counter pro-Israel money, is spending more than $1 million in support of Allam, one of the major factors making the race one of the most expensive in state history. Allam also has the endorsement of Sen. Bernie Sanders and several leading progressive groups, while Foushee has the endorsement of the state’s centrist Jewish governor, Josh Stein.
In the homestretch, Allam’s campaign spending has focused almost entirely on tying Foushee to AIPAC, as well as to other groups like Article One PAC, which has a pro-Israel leading donor and has spent $600,000 supporting Foushee.
Both have criticized the Iran strikes in the campaign’s waning days, in different flavors. “I do not support Trump’s illegal war with Iran,” Foushee tweeted, without mentioning Israel. Allam, meanwhile, is homing in on Israel: She told Politico that district voters “are ready to hold every leader who co-signed a blank check to the Israeli war hawks accountable — including my opponent,” and said in a video message opposing the strikes, “I will never take a dime from defense contractors or the pro-Israel lobby.”
At the same time, Allam has taken on some outreach to local Jews; among other gestures, she recently read a resolution celebrating the safe return of Israeli hostage Keith Siegal, a native of her district.
Democratic Majority for Israel, a pro-Israel group focused on Democrats, has not issued an endorsement in the race. North Carolina’s Democratic party has recently been engulfed in an antisemitism scandal after the head of its Muslim caucus called Zionists “modern day Nazis” and a “threat to humaity.” Gov. Stein has denounced antisemitism in the party.
Another North Carolina Democratic candidate, Rep. Deborah Ross, has also sworn off accepting AIPAC money in her own re-election bid in the state’s 2nd district. Ross is not facing any primary challengers.
Jasmine Crockett’s anti-Israel pastor may have a big day
One of the most closely-watched races nationally will be the Texas Senate primaries, where Rep. Jasmine Crockett is in a dead heat against another rising Democratic star, state Rep. James Talarico. (Both candidates have signaled support for Israel as a Jewish and democratic state but have denounced the strikes in Iran.)
But whichever way their race goes, the figure coming up behind Crockett is a cause for concern among some supporters of Israel.
Frederick Haynes III, a prominent Baptist minister and Crockett’s own pastor, is running for her seat in the state’s heavily Democratic 30th district and is a clear favorite. Like Allam in North Carolina, Haynes is also a beneficiary of American Priorities PAC, with the anti-Israel group spending at least $72,000 to support him.
Long before announcing his candidacy, Haynes has bucked Democrats on Israel. The day after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel, the pastor delivered a sermon drawing on former President Jimmy Carter to accuse Israel of “apartheid.”
“I recognize that we gotta be pro-Israel, yeah we got to do that, or we get in trouble,” he told his congregation in a snippet of a sermon posted to his Facebook page on Oct. 8. “Well, I’m coming to get in trouble.” He continued, “This country’s going to stand on the side of apartheid because that’s its track record.”
Throughout the war, Haynes would often seek to provide “context” for Oct. 7 or otherwise apply pressure to Israel, according to Jewish Insider. By January 2024 he was pushing then-President Joe Biden to cut off U.S. support for Israel if its war in Gaza continued. He has also disparaged Christian Zionism, in a similar manner to Tucker Carlson and other anti-Israel figures on the right. Prior to the attacks, he had been photographed with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, calling the Black nationalist with a long history of antisemitism “a wonderful and great man.”
Haynes also opposed war with Iran in a tweet sent the day of the strikes, without mentioning Israel.
Haynes has dwarfed his Democratic opponents in fundraising in the Dallas-area district, recently redrawn by Republicans as part of a contentious mid-decade redistricting fight.
‘The AK Guy,’ who restaged Hitler’s suicide, could win in Texas
“The man who killed Hitler has got to be a personal hero of mine,” Brandon Herrera declared in a YouTube video posted last year — before an assistant of his told him, in a stagey whisper, that Hitler died by suicide. Herrera then gave his best “The Office” stare to the camera.
That joke is a distillation of the irony-laced, very online humor favored by Herrera, a far-right 30-year-old gun manufacturer and firearms influencer who goes by “The AK Guy” and who on Tuesday is challenging — for the second time — GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales for his Texas seat in Congress.
In Herrera’s 2025 video, titled “Testing The Gun That Killed Hitler,” he wields the firearm Hitler used to shoot himself while cracking jokes about Nazi salutes and conspiracy theories imagining Hitler’s survival in Argentina. It’s not the only time he has waded into such territory.
In 2022, reviewing a Nazi-manufactured submachine gun, Herrera joked that it was “the original ghetto blaster” and filmed himself goose-stepping with the weapon over the Nazi song “Erika.” (In the video, Herrera describes the song as “a bunch of soldiers singing about a pretty girl they miss at home” and says, “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the song we just used.”)
Beyond Nazis, the Herrera-Gonzalez rematch is notable for several reasons. For one, the district includes Uvalde, site of the 2022 elementary school mass shooting, and Herrera has attacked Gonzales for a gun-control vote he made in the shooting’s aftermath.
For another, Gonzales’s career has become consumed by a lurid scandal in the days leading up to the primary, after a staffer he allegedly pressured into sex later died by suicide — vaulting the political neophyte Herrera into a strong position to unseat the incumbent, who has refused to step down.
AIPAC’s United Democracy PAC heavily boosted Gonzales while avoiding Israel as an issue during the duo’s first showdown in 2024, which ended in a runoff and a razor-thin Gonzales victory of around 400 votes in advance of his general election win.
Herrera, while saying that he “despise[s] AIPAC” over its spending against him, has also stated that Israel “is far from a top issue for me” and condemned Hamas the day after Oct. 7. “I’m not anti Israel, I’m anti Israel buying US elections,” he tweeted in 2024.
For his part, Herrera has also offered qualified support of military action in Iran, tweeting, “If there must be military action, let it be QUICK, effective, and please God keep our service members safe.” Gonzales, too, is supporting the strikes on Iran, tweeting, “Under President Trump’s close watch, the Iranian people have a historic opportunity to reclaim their country and embrace freedom.”
Another mass shooting in the state, this one with apparent links to Iran, may end up boosting Herrera’s bid as well. After a gunman in Austin outfitted with Iranian-flag clothing and wearing a “Property of Allah” sweatshirt killed three people including himself and injured 14 at a bar over the weekend, Herrera was one of many state Republicans who seized on the issue.
“‘Diversity is our greatest strength,’” the candidate tweeted mockingly, over a photo of the assailant, who was a naturalized American citizen from Senegal.
So where is AIPAC, really?
With an increasingly toxic brand, and facing backlash after a New Jersey primary campaign expenditure that backfired to likely help a pro-Palestinian candidate get elected, it might not be surprising if AIPAC kept a low profile this election cycle.
Then again, the group and its United Democracy Project have reported around $95 million, a massive war chest, and say they intend to spend intensively for the midterms.
AIPAC has made one, possibly consequential endorsement in a Tuesday race: GOP Rep. Wesley Hunt, who is running for senate in Texas. Hunt, however, is considered by most pollsters a third-place candidate in what has shaped up as a tight race between incumbent Sen. John Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, each competing for the MAGA mantle.
Opposing PACs, meanwhile, are making a big show of pushing against pro-Israel money. In addition to American Priorities PAC, the Anti-Zionist America PAC, an upstart group whose founder tried to court white nationalist Nick Fuentes, is also backing a few candidates much more on the fringes of both parties.
Those include Texas Democratic hopeful Zeeshan Hafeez, who is running against incumbent Rep. Colin Allred in the state’s 33rd district and who has cross-endorsed with Haynes; and Republican Mark Newgent, who is challenging incumbent Rep. Keith Self in the state’s 3rd district.
The post Iran, Israel and Hitler’s gun are all on the ballot in key primaries in Texas and NC on Tuesday appeared first on The Forward.
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Death of Iranian leader just before Purim revives Book of Esther parallels
(JTA) — In Jewish time, history often has a way of rhyming with the calendar. So when Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei was killed in an Israeli air strike on the Shabbat before Purim — the holiday that commemorates the downfall of Haman, a Persian tyrant who sought to annihilate the Jews — it was perhaps inevitable that rabbis, politicians and social media commentators would reach for the Book of Esther.
Some did so reverently, others triumphantly, and a few with a wink. But as Jews prepared to don costumes and drown out Haman’s name with noisemakers, the ancient story of survival in Persia collided with a very modern war in what is now known as Iran.
The Orthodox Union, the Modern Orthodox umbrella group, put out a statement titled “Purim in Our Time: Standing Up to Iranian Tyranny.” “We will read the Bible story of Esther and Mordecai overcoming the genocidal plans of Haman, who sought to destroy the Jewish people. Today, in coordination with Prime Minister Netanyahu and the IDF, President Trump and the U.S. armed forces took defensive action to silence a modern threat from the same ancestral land of Haman,” the statement read.
Such comparisons have proliferated since the killing of Khamenei.
In his first statement after the beginning of the war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the connection to Purim explicit.
“Twenty-five hundred years ago, in ancient Persia, a tyrant rose against us with the very same goal, to utterly destroy our people,” Netanyahu said. “Today as well, on Purim, the lot has fallen, and in the end this evil regime will fall too.”
Known as Persia until 1935, Iran has been belligerent toward Israel at least since the Islamic Revolution of 1978-79, which brought clerics like Khamenei, with their frequent chant of “Death to Israel,” to power.
The holiday takes its cue from the Book of Esther, which describes how the Jewish queen to the Persian king Ahasuerus engineers the downfall of Haman, an advisor to the king who was plotting the murder of the kingdom’s Jews. Although Jewish tradition treats the book as historical — and Ahasuerus is often associated with the historical ruler Xerxes I — biblical scholars and historians tend to regard the story as what scholar Adele Berlin, author of “The JPS Bible Commentary: Esther,” called a “historical novella.”
Jews across the religious spectrum noted the comparison, often to different ends. Agudath Israel of America, the haredi Orthodox umbrella group, talked about prayer and salvation in its statement about the war.
“The upcoming Jewish holiday of Purim celebrates the downfall of those who rose up against the Jewish People in ancient Persia nearly 2,400 years ago,” it read (the events described in Esther are thought to have taken place in the fifth or fourth century BCE). “We are reminded how the key to the miraculous salvation was the heartfelt prayers of men, women, and children. While prayer is always powerful, our sages have taught that it carries special power during the Purim holiday season. We call upon the Jewish community to unite in prayer and beseech the Almighty to protect all those on the front lines and in harm’s way in Israel and across the Middle East.”
Rabbi Nicole Guzik, senior rabbi at Sinai Temple, a Conservative congregation in Los Angeles, spoke about human agency in her hastily rewritten Saturday sermon.
“Right now we stand at a critical stage where the story shifts, where the final paragraph in the Megillah that we are reading right now, in real time, has yet to be written,” she said, using the Hebrew name for a scroll like the Book of Esther. “The U.S., Israel, our beloved nations are holding the pen, and they are declaring, with courage and conviction, that we will be the authors of our future in the same manner as Esther.”
Some of the comparisons have been offhanded, even flippant. The novelist Dara Horn, speaking Sunday night at a forum on combating antisemitism at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, said, “Tomorrow night is Purim, and I think it’s clear to all of us now that the best way to fight antisemitism is to take out Haman with an F-15.”
Comedian Yohay Sponder, an Israeli who often performs in North America, posted a video of a routine commenting on the death of Khamenei. Like the Purim hamantaschen cookies named after Haman, he predicted a time when Jews will eat a food named after the slain Iranian leader. He suggested khamin, the Shabbat stew also known as cholent.
Others have already adapted hamantaschen for the moment. Some have joked about baking “Khamentaschen,” combining the new nemesis’ name with the treat named for an ancient one. At least one bakery in Israel produced “Ayatollah-taschens” with a chocolate center resembling Khamenei’s trademark turban.
Evangelical Christians and Messianic Jews, for whom the Esther story has had increasing significance in recent years, also seized on the parallels. “It all made an amazing story back then, and we are praying for an equally miraculous outcome in our days that will lead to the salvation of many in Israel, Iran, and throughout the whole Middle East,” the One For Israel Ministry, a U.S.-based Messianic group, posted on Facebook..
Meanwhile, some suggested that the timing of the attacks appeared to be more than a coincidence. Digital creator Evan Pickus noted in a Facebook post that, according to the Book of Esther, Haman was hanged on the gallows just days before the calendar date that became Purim. “The evil Persian Prime Minister [sic], who issued a promise to kill all the Jews, destroyed on the same day as his ancestor,” wrote Pickus. “I honestly believe our leaders planned it this way, and I love that.”
Although no Israeli or U.S. official has said they planned the attack with Purim in mind, the idea became a talking point over the weekend, especially after CNN posted a report by Israel correspondent Tal Shalev saying the comparisons had been widely shared in Israel.
Shalev also wrote of the significance of the attacks on the Iranian leaders’ compound falling on Shabbat Zachor, the “Sabbath of Remembrance” that precedes Purim on the Hebrew calendar. The day takes its name from a special Torah reading (Deuteronomy 25:17-19) commanding Jews never to forget how Amalek — said to be the ancestral nation of Haman — attacked the vulnerable Israelites after they left Egypt. The Israelites are given a somewhat contradictory command: “Blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!”
A widely circulated image from Beit Shemesh, where an Iranian missile killed nine people in a bomb shelter that also functioned as a synagogue, showed a fragment of shrapnel puncturing a Torah right on the passage that had been read a day earlier.
The injunctions about “Amalek” are often applied, sometimes controversially, as an ongoing commandment for Jews to show no mercy toward those who might eradicate them. That, in turn, has led some Israeli politicians and Jewish observers to cite Amalek in justifying Israel’s war on Hamas and Iran, and others to criticize those same politicians as ruthless and even genocidal.
Shalev’s report inspired at least some commentators to criticize Israel, suggesting the attacks were inspired by religious or nationalist fanaticism.
Purim is itself a strange mixture of the deadly serious and the wildly playful: a story of a thwarted genocide celebrated with carnival antics, including costumes, a raucous reading of the Book of Esther interrupted by noisemakers, and even a tradition of getting drunk. For millennia, it was often a release for a beleaguered minority in strange and often hostile lands. But as Israel emerged as a military power, scrutiny from within and without the Jewish community has often focused on the real-life implications of the story’s purported lessons.
Yet despite the Israeli politicians who take the Bible as a guidebook for revenge or Jewish supremacy, there is a long tradition of commentary that sees books like Esther as intentionally nuanced, even ambiguous guides to ethical behavior, including the prosecution of just wars.
Chapter 9 in the Book of Esther details the reversal of fortune for the Jews on the 13th of the Hebrew month of Adar, when they were said to have killed 75,000 foes in the wake of Haman’s downfall. Many Jewish commentators have expressed discomfort about what can be read as a heartless response to Haman’s thwarted decree.
On Sunday, Rabbi Michelle Dardashti expanded on that theme in a letter sent to members of her Kane Street Synagogue in Brooklyn. She warned that the Purim story is not just a celebration of the Jews’ victory over a Persian despot, but a warning that “battles that begin in moral clarity do not necessarily remain that way.”
“Purim pushes us to contend with the gray — to recognize how quickly roles can flip; how, on a dime, individuals and nations can shift from victim to aggressor, from righteous to morally compromised, or into categories that resist easy labels altogether,” wrote Dardashti, whose father left Iran as a young man. “Anyone who tells you with certainty that this war with Iran will unquestionably be good for the Jews and good for the world, that it will surely end well or end quickly — I would be wary of heeding that voice.
“And anyone who speaks with absolute certainty about it being entirely disastrous, unquestionably wrong — I would be wary of heeding that voice as well.”
Rabbi Simon Jacobson, a popular lecturer from the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement, discussed the parallels between the war and Purim in an installment of his video series, “MyLife: Chassidus Applied.” “The goal, of course, is to eradicate the enemy in every possible way, exactly as it happened in Persia, 2400 years ago in the story of Purim,” he said of the war.
But Jacobson also drew on two common themes not only of the Purim holiday but of much of Jewish tradition: salvation from an enemy, and the ultimate redemption of the Jews and humankind. He characterized the war in metaphysical terms, regretting “any type of bloodshed” but aspiring to “what happens afterwards: a stage, an era, a permanent era of Messianic, … total, solemn, permanent and sustainable peace for all people of this earth.”
For some congregations, the confluence of the war and the Purim holiday posed a challenge in tone — with rabbis asking how their communities might celebrate with bombs falling across the Middle East and Israelis taking cover in bomb shelters.
At B’nai Jeshurun, an independent synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the clergy offered a schedule of observance and celebration to match the ambivalent mood. On Monday, a traditional fast day in honor of Esther marking “moments of danger and uncertainty,” they urged congregants to turn “their hearts toward prayer and summoning strength before stepping into the unknown.”
At sundown, they wrote in a letter to congregants, when the fast “gives way to celebration, in a world shaken by violence and instability, we anchor ourselves in Purim’s four mitzvot”: hearing the Book of Esther, sharing gifts with friends, giving charity and sharing a meal with friends or family.
“We cannot resolve the uncertainty of this moment,” wrote the B’nai Jeshurun clergy. “But we can choose how we meet it — with prayer, with generosity, and with one another.”
Yoni Rosensweig, a rabbi in Beit Shemesh, wrote in a Facebook post that many of the comparisons between the Purim story and the war on Iran miss crucial distinctions.
“Yes, Haman wanted to destroy us, and so did Khamenei — but Khamenei was the ruler of Iran. Haman was not the ruler — he was nothing more than a schemer. This is not just a technical difference, it’s fundamental,” Rosensweig wrote in an email to JTA. “Esther and Mordechai are trying to survive, that is all, They are trying to maintain the status quo in someone else’s kingdom.”
While the events in Persia inspired a holiday, he argued, “there is nothing long-lasting about the Jewish future in Persia which comes from the story.” By contrast, the current war has the potential to profoundly shape the Jewish future, no less than the Exodus from Egypt celebrated at Passover.
“It is about creating something new (we hope) in the Middle East. It is part of a regional war against powers that want to obliterate us. We aren’t looking to maintain the status quo,” wrote Rosensweig. “We are standing up for our right to live free, as a sovereign nation. Much like the Jews who left Egypt weren’t looking to maintain the status quo but rather to embark on a new path and start a new journey, so too we are doing with this war.”
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US urges Americans to ‘DEPART NOW’ from Israel and a dozen other Middle Eastern countries
(JTA) — The U.S. State Department urged American citizens on Monday afternoon to urgently depart from over a dozen Middle Eastern countries amid the escalating conflict in Iran.
The list includes Israel, which halted all commercial air travel when U.S. and Israeli forces jointly attacked Iran on Saturday.
“The @SecRubio @StateDept urges Americans to DEPART NOW from the countries below using available commercial transportation, due to serious safety risks,” wrote Mora Namdar, the State Department’s assistant secretary for consular affairs, in a post on X.
In addition to Israel, the countries listed in the advisory were Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, the West Bank and Gaza, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. Several of the countries have been targets of Iranian fire as the regime there has sought to widen the conflict in the Middle East.
While Namdar’s advisory urged Americans to “depart via commercial means,” there is currently no commercial air travel in or out of Israel. Israeli airlines El Al, Air Haifa and Israir announced plans to launch rescue flights to bring stranded Israelis abroad back home once authorities reopen Ben Gurion Airport, but it is not clear when that could happen. Some Israelis are making their way to Taba, Egypt, for passage into and out of Israel, but flights there are limited. Taba is about a 20-minute drive from Eilat, in southern Israel.
President Donald Trump warned on Monday that the largest U.S. strikes on Iran are yet to come.
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