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American rabbis, wrestling with Israel’s behavior, weigh different approaches from the pulpit
(JTA) — Rabbi Sharon Brous began a sermon at her Los Angeles synagogue last month with a content warning. “I have to say some things today that I know will upset some of you,” she began.
That same morning, across the country in New York City, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl was confessing something to her congregants, too: The sermon they were about to hear “kept me up at night.”
Both women — among the most prominent and influential Jewish clergy in the United States — went on to sharply criticize Israel’s new right-wing government, which includes far-right parties that aim to curb the rights of LGBTQ Israelis, Arabs and non-Orthodox Jews.
In taking aim at Israel’s government from the pulpit, the rabbis were veering close to what many in their field consider a third rail. “You have a wonderful community and you love them and they love you, until the moment you stand up and you give your Israel sermon,” Brous told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The phenomenon even has an informal name, she said: “Death by Israel sermon.”
Brous would know: A decade ago, she was the target of sharp criticism after she encouraged her congregants at IKAR, a nondenominational congregation, to pray for Palestinians as well as Jews during a period of conflict in Israel. The incident didn’t end her pulpit, but she has come to understand why many rabbis choose what she called “the path of silence” when it comes to Israel.
Now, she said, American Jews must depart from that path. “I want you to hear me,” she said in her sermon. “There is a revolution that is happening, and this moment demands an awakening on both sides of the sea, an honest reckoning.”
All over the country, non-Orthodox rabbis are making similar calculations in response to Israel’s new governing coalition, which has drawn widespread protests over its policy moves. (Orthodox communities, including their rabbis, tend to be more politically conservative and skew to the right of non-Orthodox communities on Israel issues.) Israel’s government is advancing an overhaul of the legal system that would sap the power of the Supreme Court, and is also contending with an escalating wave of violence.
Some rabbis feel more emboldened to speak aloud what they have long believed. Others are finding themselves reconsidering their own relationship to Israel — and bringing their congregants along on their journey. A few still feel that criticizing Israel from the pulpit is a misguided and even dangerous venture, one that could splinter American Jewish communities.
What cuts across the spectrum is a belief that Israel has been discussed too little from the synagogue pulpit. Brous said the tendency of liberal rabbis not to talk about Israel lest they anger their more conservative congregants has resulted in a painful reality: “American Jews have not developed the muscle that we now need to respond to this regime.”
Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City launched a new program called Amplify Israel, which he hopes will encourage Reform movement leaders to embrace Zionism even as they navigate a “deeply problematic and even offensive” new Israeli government. (Shahar Azran/Stephen Wise Free Synagogue)
Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, meanwhile, believes today’s rabbis must be vocal in fending off the influence of “competing values” about Zionism from “various organizations that are either cool on Israel or don’t like Israel or just downright anti-Zionist.”
Last year, angered by a letter signed by dozens of rabbinical students denouncing Israel’s actions during its 2021 conflict with Hamas in Gaza, Hirsch launched an initiative based at his New York City Reform synagogue to equip rabbis with tools to counter what he said was “the growing influence of an anti-Zionist element” in the next generation of Jewish clergy.
The initiative, Amplify Israel, is housed at his Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, and employs another rabbi, Tracy Kaplowitz, to work full-time to galvanize leaders from across the Reform movement to support Israel. Kaplowitz jokes that her new job won’t be complete “until every Reform Jew is a Zionist.”
Hirsch knows the new coalition is complicating his task. “The new government is going to make our promotion of Israel more difficult in the United States,” he said, noting that the government “has elements in it that are deeply problematic and even offensive to most American Jews.”
He and Kaplowitz contend that it is possible, in their view, for rabbis to criticize aspects of the Israeli government from the pulpit while still remaining broadly supportive of the Jewish state and encouraging their congregants to be the same. They also say the need to build Zionist sentiment within the American rabbinate transcends any particular moment, including this one.
“If we have to transform how we connect to Israel each time there’s an election, we’ll be driving ourselves a little bit batty,” Kaplowitz said.
Rabbi Tracy Kaplowitz is a full-time Israel Fellow at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City. She jokes that her job won’t be finished “until every Reform Jew is a Zionist.” (Ryen Greiss/Stephen Wise Free Synagogue)
Hirsch sits on the advisory board of another new pro-Israel initiative, the Zionist Rabbinic Coalition. Helmed by Stuart Weinblatt, senior rabbi at Conservative Congregation B’nai Tzedek in Potomac, Maryland, the group is an interdenominational network of more than 200 rabbis who advocate to ”strengthen the ties between American Jewry and the State of Israel.”
Weinblatt hews to an early generation’s view of how rabbis should approach Israel from the pulpit. He told JTA that he believes his colleagues should always be supportive of Israel in public, even if they choose to pressure the Israeli government and advocate against certain policies in private — which, he says, is “the appropriate vehicle” for voicing concerns. “My position has always been that support for Israel should be unconditional,” he said.
“If we as rabbis are sharply critical of Israel, the result can often lead to a distancing from Israel, which ultimately may diminish the connection people feel to Judaism and the Jewish people,” he added. “People do not always distinguish and differentiate between opposition to a particular policy and broader criticisms of Israel which can do lasting damage.”
Asked whether the Israeli government could ever conceivably take a step that would necessitate a public response from American rabbis, Weinblatt ruminated for days. He ultimately told JTA that the current debate around proposed changes to the Law of Return, the Israeli policy that allows anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent to claim citizenship, would be such an example, as that is a policy that would have a direct effect on Diaspora Jews.
Tightening who is eligible under the Law of Return is in fact a goal of some elements of Israel’s governing coalition, although the Diaspora minister assured an audience in the United States that, unlike with the proposed changes to the government’s judicial system — which have earned criticism across the political spectrum — there would be an effort to build consensus and no changes would happen overnight.
Still, the prospect of such a change so alarmed Rabbi Hillel Skolnick of Congregation Tifereth Israel in Columbus, Ohio, that he traveled to Jerusalem to address the Knesset, Israel’s lawmaking body.
“The members of my congregation and my movement have a spiritual connection with Judaism and also a political connection because we live in a democracy, so they see a Jewish democracy as an ideal that they can look to as a light unto the nations,” he said, in a speech he delivered as a representative of the Conservative/Masorti movement.
“By even questioning the idea of the Law of Return,” he went on, Israel “takes away from both the Jewish connection and the democratic connection they have with this country.”
Skolnick suggested that he was unsure of how to speak to his congregation about the new government and its agenda. “My question to you is, what message can I go home with?” he asked.
Rabbi Stuart Weinblatt, founder and chair of the Zionist Rabbinic Coalition, shown with Israeli President Isaac Herzog. Weinblatt believes American rabbis’ “support for Israel should be unconditional,” and that disagreements with its government should be hashed out in private. (Courtesy of Stuart Weinblatt)
This week, hundreds of American rabbis will be returning to their congregations with messages honed by a week in Israel. The Reform movement just concluded its biennial convention, which was held there for the first time since before the pandemic. Their visit coincided with major developments in the country’s twin crises: The Knesset advanced the judicial reform legislation, and three people were killed in a Palestinian shooting and subsequent settler riot in the West Bank.
In a sign of the balancing act that American rabbis are navigating, the Reform movement’s leader, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, who has been among the earliest and most outspoken critics of the new Israeli government, will also be a featured speaker at Amplify Israel’s conference this May aiming to encourage Zionist sentiment among Reform Jews.
At the convention, the leader of the Central Conference of American Rabbis called for Reform clergy to move away from defining Israel in stark black-and-white terms — an apparent reference to Jews who speak of “pro-Israel” and “anti-Israel” forces.
“In order to connect better with those in our communities around Israel in a nuanced and meaningful way, we must be able to move beyond the pro/con dichotomy which only serves to divide us in ways that are a distraction to the actual issues at hand,” Rabbi Hara Person told the attendees. During the conference, the rabbis attended and voiced support for Israeli protests against their government.
“We are seeing a shift for the better, in my opinion, about how Jews are feeling comfortable critiquing Israel’s policies,” Rabbi Sarah Brammer-Shlay told JTA last fall, before the Israeli elections. Brammer-Shlay was a signer of the 2021 rabbinical students’ letter who graduated from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and today is a rabbi and chaplain at Grinnell College.
That kind of shift has Weinblatt worried. “Sometimes, rabbis are actually out of sync and out of touch with their congregations, who do want to hear messages of support of Israel,” he said.
That may well be the case, particularly at synagogues with aging populations, but survey data suggests that American Jews are moving to the left on Israel at the same time that Israel itself has shifted to the right. The most recent Pew Research Center survey of American Jews, in 2021, found that most have a negative opinion of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; only one-third think Israel is making a sincere effort to achieve peace with Palestinians; and 10% support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement against Israel.
While rabbis typically consider what they think their congregants want to hear, they aren’t bound to say it. And some rabbis say this moment is a time to take a stand, even if there is blowback.
Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky of Congregation Ansche Chesed, a Conservative congregation on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, announced in December that his congregation would no longer recite the Prayer for the State of Israel, part of most congregations’ Shabbat morning liturgy since 1948. He said the extremism of Israel’s leadership meant the words no longer applied, and replaced the prayer with the more generally worded Prayer for Peace in Jerusalem.
”I couldn’t just say, ‘God, please guide our leaders well,’” Kalmanofsky said, pointing specifically to the fact that extremist politicians Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich were now government ministers who would be the beneficiaries of such prayer. “The things that they’re saying cannot possibly represent the Israel that I want to support.”
Kalmanofsky had not previously been outspoken as a critic of Israeli policy. He said he has faced some tough feedback from some in his community, including from those who believe this is a moment that demands more, not less, prayer for Israel — “not an unreasonable response,” he said. But a month into the liturgy change, he said he is confident he has made the right decision.
“Something really meaningful had changed in the public life of the state of Israel,” he said. “That deserved real recognition, and a real response.”
Continuing to focus on preserving a Jewish connection with Israel without “dealing like grown-ups” with its “very serious problems” would render the rabbinical voice irrelevant, Kalmanofsky said. “At best, we’re kind of like, ‘blind love, blind loyalty.’ And at worst, we’re totally obtuse, and have nothing meaningful to say about the real world.”
“If you’re going to have a pulpit,” Kalmanofsky added, “you’re going to have to use it once in a while.”
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Yiddish study and research in Amsterdam — a long history
אַמסטערדאַם און די ייִדישע שפּראַך האָבן אַ לאַנגע בשותּפֿותדיקע געשיכטע. ווייניק מענטשן ווייסן אַז ייִדיש־רעדערס לעבן אין האָלאַנד זײַט דעם 17טן יאָרהונדערט, און אַז זײַט דעם מיטן צװאַנציקסטן יאָרהונדערט װערט די שפּראַך געפֿאָרשט און, מיט איבעררײַסן, געלערנט, אינעם אַמסטערדאַמער אוניװערסיטעט.
לעצטנס האָט זיך געענדיקט די דרױסנדיקע סובװענץ, וואָס האָט געשטיצט די ייִדיש־פּראָגראַם אינעם אוניווערסיטעט און דעם קומענדיקן זמן װעט מען קײן ייִדיש־קורסן נישט לערנען. אַ נײַע דערװײַליקע לײזונג איז, דאַכט זיך נאָענט, נאָר די דאָצענטן און סטודענטן האָפֿן אַז די פֿאַקולטעט־פֿאַרװאַלטונג װעט װאָס פֿריִער גיבן די ייִדישע שפּראַך אַ פֿעסטן אָרט אין דער לערן־פּראָגראַם.
ס׳איז דאָ אַ סך צו דערציילן וועגן דער געשיכטע פֿון ייִדיש אין אַמסטערדאַם. אינעם 17טן און 18טן יאָרהונדערט איז די שטאָט געװען דער װעלטצענטער פֿון דער ייִדישער דרוקאַרבעט. די סאַמע ערשטע ייִדישע צײַטונג, די „דינסטאַגישע און פֿרײַטאַגישע קוראַנטן“, האָט מען טאַקע געדרוקט אין אַמסטערדאַם אין 1686 און 1687.
אין משך פֿונעם 19טן יאָרהונדערט, אונטער דער השפּעה פֿון דער דעמאָלט אײַנגעפֿירטער האָלענדישער שפּראַך־געזעץ־געבונג, איז דער דיאַלעקט מערבֿ־ייִדיש בהדרגהדיק פֿאַרשװוּנדן געװאָרן. לויטן געזעץ האָט מען קינדער געדאַרפֿט לערנען בלױז אױף האָלענדיש און די דרשות אין שיל האָט מען געמוזט האַלטן אױף האָלענדיש.
סוף 19טן יאָרהונדערט האָט זיך דער מצבֿ געביטן ווען ייִדישע אימיגראַנטן פֿון מיזרח־אײראָפּע האָבן מיטגעבראַכט זייער מיזרח־ייִדישן דיאַלעקט. ביזן הײַנטיקן טאָג קען מען הערן די השפּעה פֿון האָלענדיש ייִדיש אױף דער אַמסטערדאַמער גאַס ווי, צום בײַשפּיל, אינעם באַקאַנטן צונאָמען פֿון דער שטאָט אַמסטערדאַם: „מקום“ (אָרט).
דער אַרבעטער־קולטור־פֿאַראײן „אַנסקי“, וואָס איז געגרינדעט געוואָרן אין 1920, איז אַזש ביז אין די 1970ער יאָרן געװען אַ װיכטיקער קולטור־צענטער פֿאַר די ייִדיש־רעדערס אין האָלאַנד. דרײַ פֿערטל פֿון די ייִדן אין לאַנד האָבן נישט איבערגעלעבט דעם חורבן. פֿון דעסטוועגן איז אין האָלאַנד נאָך דער צװײטער װעלט־מלחמה אַלע מאָל געװען אַ קלײנער סכום ייִדיש־רעדערס. עד־היום לערנט מען אַ טייל פֿון די לעקציעס אין דער פֿרומער ייִדישער שול „חדר“ אױף ייִדיש.
דער אינטערעס צו דער שפּראַך האַלט אין איין װאַקסן. אַ צאָל װעלטלעכע ייִדיש־רעדערס, װאָס אַ גרױסער טײל פֿון זײ האָבן זיך געלערנט די שפּראַך ווי דערוואַקסענע, באַטײליקן זיך הײַנט אין ייִדיש־לײענקרײַזן אין פֿאַרשיידענע שטעט. במשך פֿון די לעצטע 20 יאָר זענען אַ רײ קלאַסישע ייִדישע ליטעראַרישע װערק איבערגעזעצט געװאָרן אױף האָלענדיש. עס װערט אַרױסגעגעבן די ליטעראַרישע צײַטשריפֿט „די גאָלדענע פּאַװע“ (דער המשך פֿונעם אַמאָליקן זשורנאַל „גרינע מדינה“) און די שפּראַכקורסן אינעם אַמסטערדאַמער אוניװערסיטעט האָבן זיך די פֿאַרגאַנגענע פֿיר יאָר אַרױסגעװיזן פּאָפּולער ביז גאָר.
זײַט די 1960ער יאָרן האָט זיך אַמסטערדאַם אויך אַנטװיקלט ווי אַ לעבעדיקער און פּראָדוקטיװער פֿאָרשצענטער פֿון דער ייִדישער שפּראַך. טאָגטעגלעך אַרבעט מען איבערן סאַמע גרעסטן צוויישפּראַכיקן ייִדישן װערטערבוך — דעם אָנלײַן „ייִדיש־האָלענדישן װערטערבוך“, צונויפֿגעשטעלט פֿון יוסטוס וואַן דער קאַמפּ. אָנהייב מײַ זענען אַרײַנהאַקערס אָנגעפֿאַלן אויפֿן ווערק אָבער הײַנט איז עס שוין ווידער צוטריטלעך. װאַן דער קאַמפּ האָט געזאָגט, אַז קײן דאַטן זענען, צום גליק, נישט פֿאַרלױרן געגאַנגען.
במשך פֿון דער געשיכטע האָבן אַ רײ ייִדיש־רעדערס אין אַמסטערדאַם געזאַמלט אָרטיקע ייִדישע אױסדרוקן און וועלטסווערטלעך. אין מיטן 19טן יאָרהונדערט האָט יונה ל. פֿאָרזאַנגער צונויפֿגעקליבן חנעװדיקע װערטלעך פֿון די האלענדישע ייִדן און זײ געניצט אין אַ מעשׂה װעגן די איבערלעבונגען פֿון אַן אָרעמען גאַסן־מוזיקאַנט. אַ סך פֿון די שפּריכװערטער זענען שפּעטער אַריבער אױף האָלענדיש, לדוגמא „זײַן תּחת ברענט, מוז ער אױף די בלאָסטערס זיצן“ (װער עס טוט שלעכטס, מוז „טראָגן“ די קאָנסעקװענצן).
אין אַנדערע אױסדרוקן זענען ייִדיש און האָלענדיש צונױפֿגעמישט געװאָרן, ווי למשל אין דעם װערטל װאָס כאַראַקטעריזירט די באַציִונגען אין דער אַמסטערדאַמער ייִדישער קהילה: „װען קהל שפּילט דע באַס (בעל־הבית), שנעלט מער דער פּרנס פֿאָר דען נאַז.“ (װען קהל שאַפֿט זיך, שנעלט מען דעם פּרנס אין דער נאָז.)
אין אַ סך ייִדישע שטיבער קען מען געפֿינען האַרטאָג בײמס ביכער װעגן דעם האָלענדיש־ייִדישן װאָקאַבולאַר. ביים, אַ האָלענדישער לערער היסטאָריקער, האָט צונױפֿגעשטעלט אַ װערטערביכל פֿונעם האָלענדישן ייִדיש (Resten van een taal) און אַ זאַמלונג אױסדרוקן און שפּריכװערטער (Jerosche). די צװײ ביכער זענען געװען באַליבט בײַם ברײטן ייִדישן עולם.
זײַט 1964 זענען אַ צאָל געניטע ייִדיש־לערערס געווען אויפֿן פֿאַקולטעט פֿונעם אוניווערסיטעט: צו ערשט, לעאָ פֿוקס, און דערנאָך — רענאַ פֿוקס מאַנספֿעלד. אין 2005 האָט שלמה בערגער פֿאַרנומען די פּראָפֿעסור „ייִדישע שפּראַך און קולטור“ ביז ער איז ניפֿטר געװאָרן אין 2015.
אַ רײ דיסערטאַציעס װעגן ייִדיש זענען די פֿאַרגאַנגענע יאָרצענדליקער פֿאַרטײדיקט געװאָרן. הילדע פּאַך האָט געפֿאָרשט די ערשטע ייִדישע צײַטונג אין האָלאַנד, „די דינסטאַגישע און פֿרײַטאַגישע קוראַנטן“. באַרט װאַלעט האָט אַנאַליזירט די ייִדישע היסטאָריאָגראַפֿיע אין האָלאַנד; זײַדמאַן מאַוער האָט אָנגעשריבן אַ דאָקטאָר־אַרבעט װעגן פֿרי־מאָדערנער מעדיצינישער ליטעראַטור און אָקערשט האָט מאַריאַנע אָסטינג באַקומען אַ דאָקטאָראַט פֿאַר איר שטודיע װעגן דעם ניסתּרס ראָמאַן „די משפּחה מאַשבער“.
אין אַן אַרטיקל אינעם „פֿאָרװערטס“ דעם פֿאַרגאַנגענעם מײַ האָט פֿיליפּ שוואַרץ געשריבן אַז די אַמסטערדאַמער פֿאָרשערס פֿון ייִדיש און ייִדישע לימודים האָבן זיך ביז אַהער אײַנגעשפּאַרט „אין העלפֿאַנדבײן־טורעמס“. איך בין נישט מסכּים. אַדרבא, עס זענען כּסדר געװען און אַנטשטאַנען נײַע פֿאַרבינדונגען צװישן ייִדיש־רעדערס און דער ייִדיש־פֿאָרשונג און צװישן דער ייִדישער קולטור־ירושה און דער לעבעדיקער שפּראַך.
פֿון 2023 ביז 2025 האָבן די אַמסטערדאַמער ייִדיש־סטודענטן אין אײנעם מיט זײַדמאַן מאַוער צוגעגרייט און אויפֿגעפֿירט פּורים־שפּילן אױף ייִדיש: קודם־כּל אין אַ קלאַסצימער אין אוניװערסיטעט, און אין 2025 — אין טעאַטער. זײ האָבן באַװיזן צוצוציִען צוקוקערס פֿון האָלאַנד, דײַטשלאַנד און ישׂראל. אינעם פּראָיעקט „די ייִדישע שטאָט“ האָבן פֿאָרשערס און אײַנװױנערס פֿון אַמסטערדאַם צוזאַמענגעאַרבעט, פּובליקירט פּאָדקאַסטן און מיט עפֿנלטעכן סוכּה־פּראָיעקט אין 2023 און 2024 ממש צוריק אַרײַנגעשטעלט די ייִדישע געשיכטע אין שטאָט.
אַ סך סטודענטן און לערער זענען שטאַרק אַנטוישט וואָס מע האָט אָפּגעשאַפֿן די ייִדיש־קורסן און זײַדמאַן מאַוער וועט אָנהייבנדיק אין סעפּטעמבער לערנען אינעם בר־אילן אוניװערסיטעט אין ישׂראל.
„די ייִדישע שפּראַך איז אַן אינטעגראַלער טײל פֿון די ייִדישע לימודים אינעם אַמסטערדאַמער אוניװערסיטעט,“ האָט געזאָגט באַרט װאַלעט, אַ פּראָפֿעסאָר דאָרט פֿון ייִדישע לימודים. „כּדי אױפֿצוזיגלען די רײַכע אַמסטערדאַמער ייִדישע קאָלעקציעס קען מען זיך נישט באַגײן אָן אַ קענשאַפֿט פֿון דער ייִדישער שפּראַך.“
אירענע זװיפּ, אַ פּראָפֿעסאָרין פֿון העברעיִש און אַראַמיש, האָט צוגעגעבן אַז זי און אַנדערע האָבן גוטע האָפֿענונגען אױף פֿינאַנציעלן שטיץ דורך ברײטהאַרציקע יחידים.
„די געשיכטע פֿון ייִדיש אין אַמסטערדאַם האָט זיך נאָך לאַנג נישט געענדיקט,“ האָט וואַלעט געזאָגט.
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A smaller, scarred Maccabiah Games opens in Israel, carrying the weight of Oct. 7 and war
(JTA) — JERUSALEM — Just days before the start of the Maccabiah Games, the Jewish sports competition held every four years in Israel, Australia was officially out of the competition.
Australia had canceled its official delegation — typically one of the largest — during Israel’s war with Iran. In early June, its organizing group said it could not flout the Australian government’s designation of Israel as a danger zone.
But on Sunday, with the war on hold amid peace deals announced by the United States, Maccabi Australia reversed course. On Wednesday, 14 Australian athletes marched behind the Australian flag into Teddy Stadium in Jerusalem, where they are competing in six sports across two weeks of play.
Australia’s about-face reflects the uncertainty that has plagued the quadrennial “Jewish Olympics” for more than a year, diminishing the number of athletes and countries participating and making it unusually challenging for their supporters to attend from abroad. Organizers say about 5,000 athletes are competing from 55 countries, compared to 10,000 in 2022, when U.S. President Joe Biden joined the opening festivities.
The 2022 Games marked a triumphal return after a year’s delay due to the pandemic. This year’s competition, too, followed a delay: Three weeks before play was set to start in 2025, organizers understood there was no way to bring thousands of Jewish athletes to Israel. Israel was at war with Iran, the government had declared an emergency, and airlines had stopped flying. They postponed — never expecting that conditions would be similar in the months ahead of the Games.
“We were sure that things would be much better by now,” said Roy Hessing, Maccabiah’s chief executive. “The only really good thing that has happened since then is that all the hostages are back.”
Signs of the postponement, and the wrenching years since the last Maccabiah, were omnipresent at Wednesday night’s opening event, starting with the logo for the Games, which features a “25.”
Former hostages took part in the ceremony, including IDF spotter Daniella Gilboa and the American-Israeli soldier Edan Alexander, who both performed with Israeli singer-songwriter Idan Raichel.
The ceremony also included wounded soldiers and representatives of Irgun Nechei Zahal, Israel’s official organization for disabled veterans, as well as recognition of several athletes, including swimmer Eden Zimri, who were killed on Oct. 7.
Members of the French delegation carried shirts featuring Dan Elkayam, their football teammate who was killed in December’s shooting attack on a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney.
“Welcome to your home away from home,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog told attendees. “Your gathering together in Jerusalem, in this beautiful event, fills us with pride and charges this stadium with magnificent energy. … Each of you here is a winner, and I know you will have a great Maccabiah together, in unity and in love of Israel.”
In a sign of Israel’s internal tensions, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drew both applause and audible boos as he took the podium. The ceremony took place on the eve of the 1000th day since Oct. 7, with an election looming and the vast majority of Israelis critical of Netanyahu’s refusal to open a state commission of inquiry into the failures that led to the historic attack.
Netanyahu said he had “only one message” for attendees: “In the face of antisemitism, stand tall, stand proud, do not bend, do not bow, stand strong, stand together, and together we shall win. You are all winners here, we shall be winners in the world.”
Hessing said the decision to postpone rather than cancel the Games was essential as the event has only grown more important for Jewish communities abroad, where he said “antisemitism is raging,” and for Israelis still living with the fallout of Oct. 7 and the wars that followed.
“We must have some events that will give us some joy and hope,” he said.
About 3,000 athletes arrived from the Diaspora, joined by about 2,000 Israelis. Taiwan and the Philippines sent athletes for the first time, while the largest overseas delegation came from the United States, with more than 900 athletes, ranging in age from 14 to 87.
The U.S. cheering section is smaller than it might have been, as scarce and historically costly flights have made it hard for supporters to make the trip. Einav Rabinovitch Fox told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency from her home in Ohio that she and her family had hoped to accompany her son Adam, who is on the U15 football team, to the competition. But she was not eager to bring her family into a war zone, and then she could not secure plane tickets once hostilities ended.
“It was a) really expensive and b) a transportation nightmare,” she said. “It just became impossible.”
At the opening ceremony, a mother who came from Los Angeles to support her son, also on a soccer team, told JTA that she had lucked out by purchasing El Al tickets in 2025, well before prices shot up. But when her husband went to book his own tickets last month, the only options available cost more than $10,000. He stayed home.
In total, organizers expect the Games to bring roughly 9,000 visitors from overseas, many fewer than in 2022.
But Hessing said he was looking on the bright side: “We’re still talking about thousands of tourists that will come to Israel, will support the state of Israel, will be part of amazing ceremonies, amazing trips, volunteering, and the competitions, of course,” he said.
Over the past year, there were many moments when Hessing questioned whether the Games could or should go ahead.
“We had very tough times,” he said, pointing to March’s second round of fighting with Iran and ongoing hostilities on the northern border. “I said to myself, oh my gosh, are we doing the right thing?”
The postponement made the budget harder to close. Propelled in part by war, the dollar fell from about 3.7 shekels last summer to about 2.9 today, reducing the value of money raised abroad, while flight prices climbed sharply amid widespread cancellations and rising oil prices.
The combination raised costs for both the organization and the delegations, forcing the Maccabiah to secure additional funding from the Israeli government, philanthropists and the private sector companies to close the gap.
Meanwhile, it took months of reassurance to persuade some delegation leaders to come to Israel amid security concerns. Then, hundreds of athletes from around the world backed out in March, and some countries were unable to send official delegations because of travel warnings and insurance restrictions tied to Israel’s status as a war zone.
Some athletes from those countries decided to come anyway, Hessing said, competing as individuals rather than as part of a national delegation. But Great Britain canceled its youth delegation, sending only adult athat least a dozen countries that competed last time are not represented this year, including Canada, whose 700 athletes were the fourth-largest delegation in 2022.
“While we are saddened that our more than 300 delegates were unable to take part this year, our Maccabi spirit remains as strong as ever,” Maccabi Canada posted in an Instagram story on Wednesday promoting a livestream of the opening event. “Join us in watching the opening ceremony and cheering on all those competing.”
The only recent precedent for a much smaller Maccabiah, Hessing said, was in 2001, during the Second Intifada, when about 2,000 athletes came as suicide bombings were hitting Israeli buses and cities.
The Maccabiah began in 1932 with 390 Jewish athletes from 18 countries competing. More than nine decades later, Hessing said, the Games are still judged not only by the competitions but by what participants take back with them.
This year, he said, success will mean turning those who chose to come in wartime into “great ambassadors to the state of Israel,” sending them back to their communities “as leaders, as members, with pride, and most important, with a much stronger connection to Israel.”
For many participants, it will be their first time in the country, he said, with first-time visitors typically making up 65% to 70% of the Maccabiah and about 5% later immigrating to Israel.
For Hessing, the first test has already been met. The message he hears most often from athletes and their families is that they are grateful the Maccabiah was happening.
“The first thing people are saying when they land is thank you for not canceling the Games,” he said. “It’s going to be two weeks they will never forget.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Looking for a precedent for the Supreme Court’s decisions? Try Germany in the 1930s.
In October 1936, German law professors held their annual meeting in Berlin. In his welcoming address, the meeting’s chairperson turned to the pressing issue of Jewish influence. “The Jew’s relationship to our intellectual work is parasitical, tactical and commercial,” he warned. Thanks to the Nazi state’s “healthy exorcism” of this malign presence from their profession, though, German “ethnic honor” would triumph over Jewish “cruelty and impudence.”
The chairperson was Carl Schmitt, the political philosopher whose prominence during the Nazi era earned him the moniker of the “crown jurist.” Neither his name nor his jurisprudence was cited by the Supreme Court’s Chief Justice John Roberts in his majority opinion in this week’s ruling in the case of Trump v. Slaughter. Nevertheless, this decision that, by neutering the independence of federal agencies like the FTC and FCC and stretching the already expansive powers of the president, makes for a distinct Schmittian chill.
As a young professor of constitutional law in Weimar Germany, Schmitt was as ambitious as he was accomplished, as prolific in his writings as he was pessimistic about parliamentary democracy. Nevertheless, though critical of the Weimar constitution, Schmitt was even more critical not just of the rise of political violence, but the concomitant rise of the Nazi Party and its leader, Adolf Hitler.
Come 1933, however, when Germany found itself under new management, Schmitt joined the Nazi Party and became one of Hitler’s most ardent advocates — a position that neatly dovetailed with his equally ardent hatred of Jews. As the political theorist Richard Wolin has noted in Theory and Society, Schmitt did not think the Nuremberg Laws went far enough; he demanded that existing marriages between Jews and non-Jews also be annulled and urged his fellow jurists, when quoting from works written by Jews, to label the authors as “Jewish.” (Published during the 2000s, Schmitt’s private diaries are a trove of antisemitic bilge.)
Though Schmitt distanced himself from politics in 1936 — scholars still debate the reasons — he never distanced himself from his support of the Nazi regime or its policies. With the defeat of the Third Reich in 1944, Schmitt was arrested not once, not twice, but three times as a possible candidate for the Nuremberg trials. Though his case was ultimately dismissed, he incurred a lifetime ban from teaching — a sentence that did not prevent the unrepentant Schmitt from continuing to write, transforming himself into the éminence grise of German conservative thought.
Since his death in 1985, Schmitt has enjoyed a growing reputation among arch conservative political and legal theorists — including dozens of applicants to the Heritage Foundation — to the dismay of liberal theorists like the late Jurgen Habermas. Schmitt’s early works in particular — Political Theology, The Concept of the Political, and The Guardian of the Constitution — have much bearing upon the jury-rigged jurisprudence of the six Republican sages who now sit on our Supreme Court.
Political Theology opens with a famous and oracular line: “Sovereign is he who decides the exception.” By this statement, Schmitt locates the source of sovereignty not with the people — after all, he did not write “Sovereign are they” — but with the individual who, by charisma and conviction, lays claim to power. If this sounds familiar, it should: Schmitt was a fan of the 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, whose book The Leviathan, makes the case for an authoritarian ruler.
In a word, Schmitt dismisses the legitimacy of natural law, which posits that our rights are found in human nature. But he also swats away positive law, which affirms that rights, not necessarily found in nature, are established and enforced by the state. For Schmitt, sovereign authority is instead embodied by that charismatic individual who cancels what had been law and employs violence, if necessary, to enforce his power and normalize the situation. Any binding order, Schmitt insists, is based not on natural rights or legal norms, but solely on that individual’s authority.
Such a claim echoes Hobbes’ line from the Leviathan that it “is not Wisdom but Authority that makes a law.” Not that the three justices named to the court by Trump would ever have the chutzpah to describe him as a fount of wisdom. But along with their Republican colleagues, they did have the chutzpah to dismiss nearly a century of legal precedent concerning the powers of independent federal agencies, and instead double down on their earlier decisions that had already, thanks to their dubious unitary executive theory, expanded the executive branch’s powers.
Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political reveals the danger of the fast and furious pace of these court decisions. Schmitt argues that the most fundamental political distinction is that between friends and enemies. This distinction has nothing to do with morality and everything to do with seeking and maintaining power. As the legal scholar Lars Vinx notes, Schmitt insisted that the essence of great leadership is to decide “which approach to legality or its opposite and which set of public enemies is in the interest of the nation.”
Few lines better capture the essence of politics according to Trump, just as it captures the foolishness and fearfulness of the majority on the Supreme Court. For the past 18 months, it has done its best to avoid being labeled a public enemy by our president. That it has so far been successful is a measure of just how far it has failed to defend our same nation and its constitution.
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