(JTA) — At the American Zionist Movement conference in New York City on Monday, Israeli President Isaac Herzog declined to respond to hecklers urging him to accept Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s request for a pardon.

The calls came after Herzog’s talk at the AZM Biennial National Assembly where he lamented growing antisemitism in the United States and condemned the city’s new Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who has faced criticism for his anti-Zionist advocacy.

When the audience was asked to direct questions at the Israeli leader, a delegate from the right-wing Zionist Organization of America rose and said, “Israel needs unity now, not vengeance. I’m calling on you to issue an immediate, unconditional pardon of Prime Minister Netanyahu.”

The audience erupted in shouting and several people called “shame” in Hebrew at the delegates, one of whom held a sign reading “Please, Pardon Natanyahu!”

“We made it very clear that we should focus on the challenges of the Zionist movement in America,” replied Herzog to the delegates, before moving onto the next question.

Netanyahu is currently facing three legal cases against him, including charges of fraud, bribery and breach of trust. Last month, Netanyahu formally requested a pardon from Herzog, weeks after President Donald Trump made an identical request on his behalf.

The ruckus over Herzog’s remarks demonstrated the diverse array of Zionist groups gathered for the AZM conference, which was titled “Zionism: Many Visions, One Dream.” After Herzog’s talk, Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove of the Park Avenue Synagogue delivered a keynote address where he called for the Zionist movement to widen its tent even further and welcome voices that are critical of Israel.

Directly before Herzog took the stage, he was also delivered a letter calling for him to decline the pardon request. It was organized by the Israeli expat group UnXeptable, which grew out of protests held before the war in Gaza aimed at blocking Netanyahu’s attempts to limit the power of the country’s Supreme Court.

“Mr. President, a clear refusal now would be a brave and necessary act – in defense of Israel’s democracy, in honor of our Jewish moral tradition, and for the sake of all citizens of the State of Israel and the Jewish people who care so deeply about its future,” the letter read.

The letter was supported by 25 American and Israeli progressive Zionist groups, including J Street, New York Jewish Agenda and New Jewish Narrative.

Netanyahu’s trial, which was first initiated in 2020 and has since undergone starts and stops, has sowed similar divisions within Israeli society.

On Tuesday, a survey published by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 50% of Israelis do not think Herzog should grant Netanyahu a pardon, while 41% think he should. Support for the pardon was also split between Arab and Jewish Israelis, with 43% of Jewish Israelis supporting the pardon compared to 30% of Arab Israelis.

During his Q&A with Jewish author Abigail Pogrebin, Herzog also took aim at Mamdani, saying that he was “extremely disturbed” by the new mayor-elect.

“The fact is that in the city, which comprises the largest Jewish community outside the United States, you have a mayor-elect who shows utter contempt to the nation state of the Jewish people,” said Herzog, adding that Mamdani’s rhetoric “worries me a lot.” Mamdani has pledged to honor the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Netanyahu for alleged war crimes were he to visit New York City.

Herzog also condemned Mamdani’s response to a protest last month targeting an Israeli immigration event at the Park East Synagogue. While Mamdani’s spokeswoman said the mayor-elect “discouraged the language” used at the protest, she added that “sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.”

Addressing Mamdani’s response to the protest, Herzog said “this is utterly anti-constitutional because of the right to practice your religion.”

On Sunday night at Yeshiva University’s 101st Hanukkah Dinner, Herzog also issued a sharp condemnation of Mamdani’s response to the protest, saying that “recent developments in New York City have raised a red flag.”

“The incoming mayor’s response was to suggest that Jews who consider fulfilling the ultimate Zionist dream of making aliyah are violating international law and the sanctity of the synagogue. This rhetoric is outrageous,” continued Herzog.

At the AZM convention, when asked by Pogrebin what his response was to the 33% of Jewish New Yorkers who voted for Mamdani, Herzog replied that he was “not here to judge anybody.”

“I’m just looking at from a bird’s eye view, as a leader of the Jewish people, as somebody who really cares for all Jewry and for its well being, and the fact that every Jew should not be harassed anywhere, anywhere in the world because of his or her faith, and that’s all I’m talking about,” continued Herzog.

But when Pogrebin pushed further, asking Herzog about “young Jews who are feeling disquieted by the war,” the Israeli leader defended his country’s conduct in the two-year campaign to rout Hamas and return Israeli hostages.

“I’m not shying away from any criticism during the last few years. I’m confronting it, and I’m explaining it,” said Herzog. “We yearn and operate towards to be perfect, but sometimes you have to defend yourself, and we are defending ourselves according to the basic, most inherent rights of self defense by the international rules of international law.”

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(JTA) — In the lead-up to New York City’s mayoral election last month, Elliot Cosgrove emerged as one of the most outspoken rabbinic critics of Zohran Mamdani, the anti-Zionist activist who is now the mayor-elect.

On Monday, speaking to a convention of Zionists, Cosgrove turned his critique toward U.S. Jews, saying that supporters of Israel “shouldn’t be surprised” by Mamdani’s roughly 33% tally among Jewish voters.

“For a liberal Zionist disillusioned by the Israeli government, Mamdani’s anti-Zionism is a difference of degree, not of kind,” said Cosgrove, who leads Park Avenue Synagogue on the Upper East Side. “He understood the fissures of our community better than we ourselves did, and the question we face now is, what are we going to do about it?”

Speaking at the the convention of the American Zionist Movement, Cosgrove laid out a vision for a “new chapter of American Zionism,” calling for his audience to “avoid the reductive and destructive tactic of labeling people with whom we disagree either as self-hating Jews or colonialist aggressors.” He said a rigid vision of what Zionism should look like had been damaging for the Jewish people.

“By making unconditional support for the Israeli government a litmus test for Jewish identity,” Cosgrove said, “we ourselves have inflicted harm on the Jewish future.”

Cosgrove’s speech capped a two-day conference for the AZM, an umbrella organization for 51 U.S. Zionist groups that also serves as the American affiliate to the World Zionist Organization. Tensions were running high at the national assembly as Cosgrove took to the podium to call for the Zionist movement to widen its tent.

Speaking to the conference’s roughly 250 attendees in the East Village, Cosgrove lamented what he described as the increasing ideological divide between American and Israeli Jewry as a result of the war in Gaza. He criticized some Israeli policies in laying out why many in the liberal Jewish majority are feeling distanced from Israel.

“Leaving aside the role of historical revisionism and progressive identity politics, the unresolved status of the Palestinians, lacking as they are in freedom of movement and access, self determination and other accoutrements of sovereignty, forms a wedge issue between an increasingly liberal-leaning American Jewry and an increasingly right-leaning Israeli Jewry,” said Cosgrove.

During his address, Cosgrove also criticized the lack of recognition of the Conservative and Reform movements in Israel, adding that the country “neither supports, defends nor recognizes Judaism as I teach it and preach it.”

“The fact that the same government that fails to recognize American Jews also fails to recognize the Palestinian right to self determination only serves to increase American Jews’ sense of estrangement,” said Cosgrove.

The AZM Biennial National Assembly, which was titled “Zionism: Many Visions, One Dream,” brought together representatives from a wide range of U.S. Zionist groups. An hour before Cosgrove’s remarks, Israeli President Isaac Herzog also gave a talk where he lamented growing antisemitism within the United States.

In a Jewish environment shaped by the Oct. 7 attacks and the war in Gaza that followed, Jews have been buffeted by intense criticism on the left, a rise in antisemitism and internal fissures. Cosgrove both referenced and reflected these divisions, which often pit Jews offering full-throated support for Israel, its military and its government, against those like Cosgrove who are committed Zionists but expressed doubts about the conduct of the war and Israel’s political direction. Far to the left of both groups are increasingly visible Jewish anti-Zionists and younger Jews deeply disillusioned with the Jewish state, whom Cosgrove also referenced in his talk.

To address the growing divide within American Jewry over support for Israel, Cosgrove called for “heshbon hanefesh,” or a “self audit.” But the onus for “heshbon hanefesh,” Cosgrove added, “goes both ways” — and he reinforced red lines that he laid out in a October sermon against Mamdani and his Jewish supporters that spurred a rabbinic statement that drew more than 1,300 signatures.

“For such a time as this, when Israel is surrounded by enemies, Jewish critics of Israel need to be judicious in how they voice their dissent,” continued Cosgrove. “It’s one thing to attend a pro-democracy rally in a sea of Israeli flags that begins and ends with the singing of ‘Hatikvah.’ It’s another thing to stand in an encampment next to someone calling for global intifada.”

But within the broad Zionist tent, Cosgrove argued, all views should be taken seriously in the quest to build a future for Zionism while it is under attack..

“The future dream of American Zionism depends not on my vision or yours, not on the right or the left, religious or the secular,” said Cosgrove. “It’s a dream that depends on all of us together, an American Zionism for such a time as this, bold enough to embrace the voices, complexities, paradoxes and even contradictions of our age.”

At the conclusion of his speech, dozens of audience members stood to applaud, though a couple of “boos” could be heard across the room.

During a brief Q&A following the keynote speech, Marc Jacob, a member of the Haredi Orthodox slate Eretz HaKodesh, said he felt “ostracized” by Cosgrove for “wanting to open the door to those who are sitting in camps that are against the Jewish state.”

In response, Cosgrove clarified that he was “trying to stand firm in my convictions, but also embrace those views to the left of me who don’t represent my views.”

“I was not speaking about those outside of the camp who seek the ill will and destruction of the Jewish people,” said Cosgrove. “I was speaking about the ability of those within the tent to find an opportunity, a platform to support Israel in a way that need not be aligned with every policy of this or that Israeli government.”

The post Prominent rabbi and fierce Mamdani critic turns his criticism toward Jews and Israel appeared first on The Forward.

Most discussions about “saving” Israel revolve around geopolitics and security from the dangers posed by the rest of the Middle East. But the most vexing of the challenges facing the Jewish state is internal.

The burgeoning military and economic crisis surrounding Haredi communities risks destabilizing the entire state. What is needed is an organized effort, across all sectors of society, to incentivize hundreds of thousands of Haredi Jews to participate in Israel’s shared life in ways that, while honoring their practice, will prevent the social and economic disintegration that looms if no drastic changes are made.

This effort should be organized through a new ministry, tasked with encouraging and assisting Haredim in pursuing a more modern education, employment, military service and active citizenship. Ideally, it would be an independent statutory body, shielded from daily politics.

An unavoidable demographic problem

The significantly higher-than-average Haredi birthrate means the Haredim are projected to make up a third of Israel’s citizens by 2050, and a majority soon thereafter.

This creates a major economic problem. Right now, Haredi communities are broadly subsidized by the Israeli government: As one indicator, Haredi men have a participation level in the workforce of just around 50%. Many of those who do work do so in jobs in the religious establishment — as kashrut supervisors, mikveh workers, and so on.

That lack of economic productivity is made up for by governmental spending. For the 2023–2024 budget cycle, some reporting estimates that spending directly targeting Haredi communities — including through stipends for scholars and funding for yeshivas and religious institutions — was on the order of NIS 13.7 billion, about $4 billion. But more spending on the community is not officially recorded — for example, that on the child subsidies, which overwhelming benefit the Haredim, whose birthrate is almost three times higher than that of other Israelis.

The Haredi leadership is entrenched in its refusal to change. They reject all calls to have yeshivas integrate a core curriculum that would enable the next generation to be employable in a modern economy, insist on Torah study as the main vocation for men well into adulthood, and have practically sanctified draft evasion.

The implications are existential. Already today, as the productive sector bears an ever-heavier burden, there is growing emigration among non-Haredim — engineers, doctors, and entrepreneurs taking with them the talent and capital that drive Israel’s economy. According to recent data, about 125,000 Israelis have left since 2022.

And as the Haredi share of the population rises, it is likely they will help secure the political right — for which they overwhelmingly vote, in large part because of support for a continuing Haredi draft exemption — as something like the permanent ruling bloc.

That outcome is all but sure to further accelerate emigration. The result will be deepening poverty, and further military insecurity, as less Orthodox portions of the population increasingly rebel against a system they see as unjustly demanding they put their lives on the line to protect the Haredim from the dangers of war.

At present, every incentive structure encourages the Haredim to persist in this madness. The Haredi community, to a large extent, ostracizes those who leave the flock — estimated as between 5% and 15% of the community — and in many cases even the tiny minority who merely enlist in the army.

A radical solution

With communal leadership so averse to change, what can the rest of Israel do?

The incentive structure must be turned on its head, through a series of radical but necessary governmental moves.

• Tie all school funding to compliance with a national core curriculum. Haredi youth, particularly boys, currently experience little to no instruction in modern subjects. This cannot continue. It creates a crippled society that is beholden to the rabbis, and ensures the Haredi community cannot contribute meaningfully to Israel’s economy, as new generations are not given the knowledge and skills to work. This lack puts an unbearable economic burden on the ever-shrinking rest of Israeli society.
• Phase out study stipends past university age. Some will object that this move will destroy the yeshiva lifestyle. But that lifestyle is a result of power politics, not tradition: in the West, many Haredim are working members of society and thrive as such.
• Redesign child subsidies. Haredim currently have an average of almost seven children per family, which is financially possible largely because of child subsidies issued by the state. To encourage workforce participation, this system must be adjusted, such that families cannot subsist primarily on these subsidies: If this trend continues, the state will buckle under the economic burden of supporting the rapidly expanding community. This must be done with great sensitivity, and apply only to future births.
• And, critically, mandate full national or military service for all citizens, with some tailored options for Haredi sensibilities.

The message would be that modern Israel will not continue to fund its own destruction. In charge of implementing it would be the new ministry. Its main areas of responsibility would include:

• Public outreach and culture — Enshrining the message that integration is not betrayal of faith, but rather an expansion of opportunity: Torah and modernity can coexist, and work, service and education are deeply Jewish values.
• Military and national service — In coordination with the IDF, establishing dedicated Haredi military tracks, alongside national service paths for some men and women who insist on that route. This would involve expanding existing routes, including the number of dedicated Haredi units in the military, and providing housing and psychological support for recruits facing ostracism.
• Adult education — Establishing adult education institutions offering full core studies to Haredim who never learned math, English or science. State scholarships and stipends during the transition period, would encourage participation.
• Employment and entrepreneurship — Creating partnerships with employers to fund professional training, apprenticeships, and personal mentorship, as well as tax incentives for companies hiring Haredim or ex-Haredim — especially in high-tech, healthcare and education, fields where Haredim have already made some inroads.
• Social and family support — Forming a national network of counselors, social workers and career coaches to accompany Haredim through their increasing integration into the modern world. Many Haredim will be deeply resistant to this change; establishing thoughtful routes to help them will be crucial to the initiative’s success.

The necessity of adaptation

Integration does not mean the Haredi lifestyle must end — only that it must adapt, so that the society in which it exists can sustain into the future. The goal would be to make integration safe and feasible.

The scale of the initiative must match that of the threat. It will cost tens of billions of shekels — but the money must be found, just as it was found for the endless Gaza war, which, for all its importance, posed a lesser risk to Israel’s continuance. Israel already spends vast sums each year subsidizing unemployment and ignorance in the Haredi sector. Redirecting some of these funds to integration will yield immense economic and social returns. I hope that many donors, secular and religious alike, will join the effort.

A great confrontation over such an ambitious effort would be unavoidable. Many Haredim, including their elected officials, will rage and accuse the government of waging war on Judaism. Protests, petitions to the Supreme Court, and even charges of antisemitism will follow. The Haredi leadership will claim the government seeks to “convert” them. But this fight must be fought at some point; the options are to fight it now, or to risk an even worse version of it in the future.

The irony is that the current situation is bad for the Haredim themselves. They are trapped in a system that denies them opportunities, and leads them instead to enforced poverty and dependence on rabbinic leadership. This leadership has built a structure of control that survives only by keeping its public helpless.

For too long, powerful parties, including the governing Likud, have kicked this issue down the road, sacrificing the nation’s future for coalition stability. It is a moral and strategic disaster. Israel’s place in the modern world hangs in the balance.

The post Israel faces a most dire threat, and there’s only one solution appeared first on The Forward.