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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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Americans helped free Soviet Jewry and the hostages too. It’s time to step up and stop West Bank terror.
For decades, American Jewry has placed the value of tikkun olam at its core. That commitment motivated mass momentum for social justice in many forms, from B’nei Mitzvah projects to Mitzvah Day and long-term campaigns for justice. American Jews have come together again and again to fight for causes beyond politics or religion — and often, you have won.
From calls to congresspeople, to weekly protests and demonstrations, you are a community that knows how to make things happen, how to propel an issue to the top of the agenda. This skillset — and this passion for combating injustice — is needed again now.
The issue of Jewish terrorism in the West Bank must become a top concern for American Jews, and it must fuel collective action. This weekend, we saw it again: four Palestinians and two Israelis killed in deadly clashes. Palestinian homes burned. Mosques torched and vandalized. More raids of Palestinian villages by the IDF, triggered by extremist Jewish settlers’ push to dispossess, claim land, and annex territory.
We see it almost daily — arson, shootings, theft, even murder perpetrated by Jews in the West Bank. In 2025, NGOs active on the ground recorded some 900 incidents of violence, a dramatic increase from previous years. Settlements once evacuated under the disengagement plan are being resettled. Recent legislation supports these efforts with new roads paved for settlers and new army bases to secure settlements. Too often, Israeli soldiers passively or even actively aid settlers in their attacks on Palestinians.
Once, pressure from the U.S. and from Europe was enough to rein in such aggression. No longer.
We can no longer look away while violence, dispossession and even murder happen in the name of the Jewish people. We can no longer stay silent while Palestinian civilians are caught in the crossfire, unable to reach urgent medical care and emergency services. American Jews have the connections, the commitment and the capacity to implement a campaign to end the violence once and for all. The time to act is now.
I know how powerful these campaigns are first hand. In many ways, I am among their beneficiaries. My parents immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union after decades of tireless campaigning by American Jews to allow my family to experience freedom. What started as a small project in the 1950s became a full-fledged movement to end the oppression of Soviet Jews. The result was liberation: the freedom to emigrate to a place where we could live freely as Jews. Next year we will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the historic rally that brought almost a quarter of a million people to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to demand that then-President Ronald Reagan push Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to free Soviet Jews.
Over the last three years, we Israelis once again witnessed the power of American Jews when you unite behind an issue. That same pressure, that same power, was instrumental in the push for the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that brought the final hostages home. Weekly vigils, protests, and solidarity events across the U.S. insisted that President Donald Trump, and President Joe Biden beforehand, put the release of the hostages at the top of the political agenda.
This next campaign of the American Jewish community must demand an end to Jewish terror in the West Bank. What was once seen as aberrant behavior, the actions of a few bad apples, is hardening into Israeli government policy. Myriad reports, articles and data points show how out of control settler violence has become. Too often, the IDF fails to stop and even assists in the brutality. Legislation passed by the far-right government further cements these land grabs and paves the way for full on annexation of the West Bank.
The American Jewish community has not only the ability but the responsibility to make it stop.
While some American Jews are turning away from Israel, we must call on them, on us all, to do the opposite. We must turn toward Israel, to face down violent settlers in the West Bank and support the Israeli activists and leaders who are fighting for safety and dignity for all.
Many of us are pained to see young adult Jews, in particular, distancing themselves or actively opposing Israel. In the face of settler terror, the devastation in Gaza and the ongoing occupation, they don’t see the values they were taught as core to Jewish identity. We have a choice to make and invite our young people to make it with us: embrace values of human decency, freedom, and justice and advance them in Israel.
Campaigning for a better world, for action, for change, runs through our DNA. It is part of our soul. At this time, as an Israeli, as a two-time beneficiary of these efforts, I am asking you once again for your partnership. Just as American Jews fought for my family’s freedom, and just as you fought to bring our hostages home, I ask you to fight for this, too. We need you to help make this violence and bloodshed stop. You have never stood on the sidelines before. This is your time.
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Netanyahu compares New York with ‘the 1930s’ after Mamdani calls for his arrest
(JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu compared New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s leadership with “the 1930s,” escalating a showdown between the two leaders as Netanyahu plans to visit the city in the coming weeks.
The Israeli leader made an evocative reference to the period when the Nazis took over Germany in a Fox News interview on Tuesday, adding that he is “definitely going” to New York for the U.N. General Assembly in September. The planned trip prompted Mamdani, a staunch pro-Palestinian advocate, to explore executing an international arrest warrant against Netanyahu.
Mamdani said last week that his Law Department did not find the city could legally make the arrest, but he challenged the U.S. government to do so, calling Netanyahu “the architect of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people.” President Donald Trump has rejected the idea of an arrest. The United States is not a party to the International Criminal Court, which has accused Netanyahu of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, and its warrants have no legal power in the U.S.
Netanyahu responded to Mamdani in an interview with Fox News commentator Sean Hannity, a close Trump ally, while visiting Washington, D.C. this week. He called the mayor a “hate-spewing elected official who’s pitting one group of New Yorkers against the other.”
“He’s turning them against New York Jews. I mean, what are we, in the 1930s?,” said Netanyahu.
Since calling for Netanyahu’s arrest, Mamdani has said repeatedly that he does not single out Jews or Israel for punishment.
“My interest in executing that warrant is not specific to Benjamin Netanyahu, but to anyone who they put a warrant towards for war crimes and crimes against humanity,” Mamdani said to reporters last week, adding that he also described Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks on Israel as a “horrific war crime.”
In a separate press conference on Monday, Mamdani said his characterizations of Netanyahu as a war criminal “were not even frankly personal assessments, they were objective facts.”
Mamdani’s views are increasingly popular in the United States, with a new survey from The Economist/YouGov showing that nearly half of Americans believe the country should arrest Netanyahu. 49% of respondents said the U.S. should enforce the ICC warrant, while 27% said “no” and 23% were unsure.
Former Mayor Bill de Blasio also backed Mamdani’s statements. “I think he drew attention to the fact that Netanyahu is literally a war criminal,” de Blasio said in a Fox News interview on Monday. “This guy’s policies led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinian children, and that defines a war crime to me and to so many people around the world.”
Major Jewish groups have fiercely criticized Mamdani’s arrest ambitions. The UJA-Federation of New York accused him of “distortions and disinformation.”
“At a time of rising antisemitism, repeatedly singling out and vilifying the world’s only Jewish state for perceived political benefit is repugnant, puts Jews at greater risk — and leaves many Jewish New Yorkers feeling targeted and unwelcome in the city we call home,” the federation said in a statement.
On Tuesday, Netanyahu slipped into the White House through a side door for a meeting with Trump that did not include public face time. Pundits theorized that the low-profile affair reflected how unpopular Netanyahu has grown in the United States amid the Iran and Gaza wars, making it politically risky for Trump to be seen with him, as the president’s approval also sinks to a new low.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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London’s Hackney council gives initial nod to ending 58-year twinning with Haifa after emotional debate
(JTA) — LONDON – It was one kippah vs. a sea of keffiyehs, as Hackney Council gave initial approval on Tuesday night to begin the process of ending its nearly six-decade twinning relationship with the northern Israeli city of Haifa.
The motion, brought by the Green Party-led administration, was voted on and approved after councilors argued passionately for almost 30 minutes over whether ending the relationship was a moral imperative in light of the war in Gaza or that it would undermine one of the borough’s longest-standing examples of coexistence and dialogue.
The final tally, which has yet to be made public,follows the Green Party’s sweeping victory in Hackney’s May 7 local elections, when it won control of the council for the first time, capturing 42 of the borough’s 57 seats. Labour, which had controlled Hackney for more than two decades, was reduced to nine seats, while the Conservatives held six.
Hackney is an inner London borough, home to one of Britain’s largest Jewish communities alongside a substantial Muslim population. According to the council’s own report, which cites estimates from the Interlink Foundation, Hackney’s Orthodox Jewish community numbers between 27,405 and 29,460, or between 11.7% and 12.5% of the borough’s population. According to the 2021 census, Hackney’s Jewish population is 6.7% while its Muslim population is 13.3%.
The passage of the vote does not mean that the council will immediately sever ties with Haifa, which it has been twinned with since 1968. Instead, the council voted to begin the formal process, including writing to the mayor of Haifa, conducting an equalities impact assessment, and establishing a cross-party working group before a final decision is brought before the full council.
Introducing the proposal, Green councilor Sam Mathys said the move fulfilled a central manifesto pledge made during the election campaign.
“For decades, we have witnessed human rights abuses committed by the State of Israel against the Palestinian people, which has escalated to a horrifying and unprecedented scale over the past years,” she said, adding, “We want civic partnerships that are about fostering peace, justice, and equality.”
The council report notes that Haifa was originally selected because of its “harmonious multicultural, multi-faith populations and good records in community relations.” Over the past three decades, the relationship has centered on links between Hackney’s Homerton University Hospital and Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center, rather than broader civic exchanges.
Conservative councilor and Orthodox Jew Simche Steinberger argued the proposal ignored both the history and practical benefits of the partnership.
“You’ve not spoken to any of the six Jewish councilors about it,” he said. Citing medical exchanges between the two hospitals, he added, “It’s probably the only twinning which actually does something because I remember a few years ago where the doctors from Haifa Hospital were here in Homerton teaching them what to do.”
He argued that councilors had been elected “for local issues, not for national issues,” and called the proposal “a disgrace,” before urging them to withdraw the motion.
Labour councilor Ben Lucas likewise opposed the proposal despite saying his party was “unequivocal in our abhorrence of the devastation and violence in Gaza caused by the Israeli government” and “we utterly condemn the Hamas terrorist attacks.”
“The Labour group in all good conscience cannot support this paper,” he said.
Lucas described the twinning agreement as having been forged in 1968 in a spirit of working-class solidarity, a partnership that was “multi-faith, multi-ethnic, and built most notably on the noble idea of medical cooperation.”
He added, “Haifa is not perfect, but for those who want peace, it represents a model of coexistence, a fighting chance for peace.” He also noted that the Israeli city was home to “socialists and greens, aghast at the conflict and fighting for lasting solutions.”
“You’re punishing a people for the actions of a government,” he said, calling the proposal “a performative gesture.” He added, “Let’s be bridge builders, not burners.”
Former deputy mayor Anntoinette Bramble, speaking for Labour, also argued that twinning existed to preserve relationships precisely when disagreements arose.
She said the medical exchange partnerships strengthened communities by bringing together professionals and residents of different faiths and backgrounds. “I’m perplexed by this proposal because it doesn’t seem to strengthen those communities,” she said. “What it seems to do is cause division.”
She also asked, “How can a transparent review that is non-partisan, already come with a decision before the review has begun? You need to be honest about what you’re doing here.”
Supporters argued that maintaining the relationship would conflict with Hackney’s stated commitment to human rights.
Green councilor Manal Massalha, who described herself as the granddaughter of Nakba survivors, spoke at length about conditions in Gaza and the West Bank before declaring, “Never again is never again for everyone.”
“Respect for international law and human rights born from the ashes of the Holocaust, together with the ICJ’s findings on Israel’s unlawful occupation requires us to reject dehumanization, military occupation, oppression, impunity, and racism,” she said.
Massalha rejected accusations that the proposal targeted Israelis or Jews. “De-twinning is not about opposing a people, a religion, or a culture. It’s about ensuring that our institutional relationships reflect those values.”
One of the proposal’s most vehement supporters was Green councilor Florence Schechter, who was raised in, but no longer practices Orthodox Judaism.
“It is my Jewish values that inform me. Hackney should no longer be twinned with Haifa,” she said, adding that fellow Green councilor Cathy Troupp, who is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, shared her position.
Drawing on Jewish teachings, she argued, “When Gentiles open their newspapers or log into social media and they see the horrors that are being committed in Palestine, children maimed and murdered, prisoners mocked by soldiers, what will people think of all Jews?”
“It isn’t fair and it isn’t right that the actions of Israel should reflect on all Jewish people,” she added. “If the Jewish people of Britain want to fight rising antisemitism, the first thing they must do is condemn the genocide in Palestine.”
Closing the debate, Mathys stressed that the vote marked “a first step,” saying the cross-party working group would hear from interested parties before bringing recommendations back to the council in January 2027.
Following the decision, Board of Deputies President Phil Rosenberg posted on X, “Tonight, the Hackney Green Party showed its ignorance and bigotry.” He added, “This vote represents the prioritization of spite over sense.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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