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As religious affairs minister, Matan Kahana tried to bring Israelis closer to Judaism — by reducing religious laws
Matan Kahana was an F-16 fighter pilot in the Israeli Air Force, so he’s not one to back down from a difficult mission. When he entered politics and served as Israel’s minister of religious services in Naftali Bennett’s coalition government, Kahana gave himself a politically perilous assignment: to loosen the grip of haredi Orthodox rabbis on Israeli religious life. He pushed for significant reforms within Israel’s religious institutions and kashrut certifications and appointed women to religious councils. The Israeli press called his actions “revolutionary.” Now a Knesset member for Benny Gantz’s National Unity party, Kahana said he will fight to temper the far right and keep his reforms intact.
In our interview, Kahana talks about his own religious background, why he chose to take on a mission of reform, and how Israelis and the diaspora can find common ground.
The perception that the Orthodox have a hold on Israeli life is one of the most significant points of contention between Israel and Diaspora Jews. Is that starting to change?
Most of the Jews in Israel are Orthodox. Even the secular Jews in Israel are Orthodox. As we say here, “The synagogues that we are not going to are Orthodox synagogues.” Take me, for example. I never met a Reform Jew until I joined politics, and the first time I met a Conservative was after I was released from the army at the age of 46. All this influences the relationship between Israel and the Diaspora. We have to work together with the Jews in the Diaspora to find solutions to this to this issue. The hardest thing is the conversion issue because we don’t accept non-Orthodox conversions. Even when I was the minister of religious affairs, and I was a very revolutionary one, I made a lot of reforms in these religion-and-state issues. But we have to find a solution so we will not tear the relationship between Jews in Israel and Jews in the Diaspora. It’s very important that we continue to be am echad — one people.
The Times of Israel called you an Orthodox revolutionary. It sounds like that’s a term you embrace. What is it about your background or your personality that makes you want to take these established institutions and reform them?
That’s a very good question. The thing is, I have two legs. Of course, my right leg is an observant Jew that observes halacha and the living God and tries to do all the mitzvot. But my other leg is where I spent all of my adult life with the most secular people in Israel — the pilots in the Israeli Air Force. So, I thought that a person like me could bring a solution to these rifts. You can’t force anyone to believe in God. And you can’t force anyone to be a religious Jew. And I believe that if we do as much as we can to reduce forcing people, they will come by themselves. This is what I tried to do, to reduce religious laws, and hopefully, they will try to be more and more close to Judaism.
You’re a relative newcomer to politics. As you know, Israeli politics is a rough business. What have you learned so far?
I learned that it’s totally different from what I knew in the air force and in the army, where there is competition, but everyone wants you to succeed. In politics, everyone wants you to fail, and they will be happy to see you fail. Everything in politics comes with a price. If you and I want the same thing, but you want it a bit more than me, it will cost you.
What are your priorities now as a member of the Knesset?
I will fight to preserve some of the changes that I made. And I hope that they will not erase everything. I’m very afraid about what they are going to do when the opposition is very weak, and the coalition is very strong. I will have to make sure that things are going in the right direction. In every field that they will deal with — in security, the law, religion and state, economics, everything — we should watch them and see that they’re going the right way. Even in the field of connection to the Diaspora Jews, I am very afraid that it’s not going to be very simple.
The Z3 conference is focused on fostering a sense of Jewish unity. What do you think are the biggest obstacles to unity between Israel and the diaspora?
I will start with the relationship between the Orthodox Jews in Israel and Reform and Conservative Jews in the Diaspora. In my days as the minister of religious affairs, at least I had some conversations with non-Orthodox Jews in the Diaspora. When I was visiting the United States, I visited Reform synagogues. Maybe I didn’t deliver all that they wanted, but they knew that I would always listen to them. I am not so sure that the next minister of religious affairs will want to meet them at all.
Let’s say we put you in charge tomorrow. What is the ideal relationship between synagogue and state? How would you set things up?
What’s happening is that extremists from both sides have been influencing what’s happening in Israel. The ultra-Orthodox are telling us how we should act and, on the other side, there are also secular extremists that will not accept any kind of agreement. So, if the normal people in the middle of this political mess gather together and say, “We want some agreements,” everyone will give a little bit. Each side will compromise a little bit—not fulfill all our dreams, but we will be able to live together in harmony.
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Candidate who vowed to imprison ‘American Zionists’ loses in Texas runoff
(JTA) — Sheriff’s deputy Johnny Garcia won the Democratic nomination Tuesday in Texas’ 35th Congressional District, defeating opponent Maureen Galindo following a race shaped by scrutiny over Galindo’s antisemitic rhetoric.
The runoff in the San Antonio race drew national attention after Galindo, a local housing activist and therapist, came under scrutiny for comments that included vows to turn a local immigrant detention center “into a prison for American Zionists” and claims that it was her “perception that Zionist billionaires run the world.”
Following Galindo’s surprise first-place finish in the march primary, national Democratic leaders and Jewish organizations condemned her rhetoric and urged voters to reject her candidacy, including Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, who revealed to JTA earlier this month that he would not back or campaign with Galindo.
The district, which stretches between San Antonio and Austin, was heavily affected by Republican redistricting this year, one of several factors that local political observers and Democratic Party leaders said contributed to Galindo’s earlier win.
The race also attracted outside spending, with Lead Left PAC, a newly launched super PAC apparently tied to a Republican donation platform, pouring over $900,000 on ads and mailers promoting Galindo. Last week, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee launched a $35,000 ad buy against Galindo, an unusual step for the DCCC to take against a Democratic candidate.
“Republicans just spent weeks and almost a million dollars propping up an antisemite, and they should be ashamed and embarrassed — it was a disgrace,” the president of the Democratic Majority For Israel PAC, Brian Romick, told JTA in a statement. “Tonight is a victory for the voters of TX-35, for the Democratic Party, and for every Democrat who believes that antisemitism has no home in our coalition.”
Romick told JTA Tuesday night that he believed the results of the runoff signaled that Democratic primary voters “aren’t going to elect antisemitic candidates, and in the districts that we need to win, pro-Israel candidates are our best bet.”
Garcia will now face Republican nominee Carlos De La Cruz, who defeated opponent John Lujan, in the Nov. 3 general election.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Candidate who vowed to imprison ‘American Zionists’ loses in Texas runoff appeared first on The Forward.
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Ukraine reburies Nazi collaborator with state honors, drawing Israeli condemnation
(JTA) — Israel criticized Ukraine Monday after President Volodymyr Zelensky gave full state honors to a Ukrainian nationalist leader who was part of a movement that collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.
During a reburial ceremony on Sunday, Zelensky described Andriy Melnyk and his wife, Sofia Fedak-Melnyk, as “iconic Ukrainians of the 20th century who are deeply respected,” according to The New York Times.
Melnyk led one of the factions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists during its collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II. Though the Ukrainian organization shared a mutual opposition to Soviet rule with the Nazis, it also promoted antisemitic rhetoric and some of its members participated in the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust. Melnyk initially sought cooperation with Nazi Germany but was later detained by the Nazis as relations with Ukrainian nationalist groups deteriorated.
The ceremony marked the latest flashpoint in a longstanding dispute over Ukraine’s commemoration of World War II-era nationalist figures linked to Nazi collaboration. In 2018, the country designated the birthday of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera as a holiday, and in 2017, a statue was unveiled honoring a nationalist leader whose regime killed tens of thousands of Jews in pogroms during the Russian Revolution.
The remains of Melnyk and his wife were exhumed from Luxembourg last week and then transported to Ukraine for reburial at Kyiv’s National Military Memorial, which opened last year for soldiers killed in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Glory to every Ukrainian hero! Glory to all our Ukrainian warriors! Glory to our people!,” Zelensky, who is Jewish, wrote in a post on X marking the ceremony, adding that he was “grateful to everyone who has worked to make such returns of great Ukrainian figures possible and to give the Ukrainian People their own pantheon of heroes.”
The reburial was quickly decried by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, which wrote in a post on X that it was “deeply troubled by such national commemorations, which come at the expense of historical truth and the memory of Holocaust victims.”
“Honoring the leader of a movement that supported and collaborated with Nazi Germany during the persecution and murder of millions of Jews undermines the moral integrity essential to Holocaust remembrance,” the post read.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry wrote on X that there is “no place for ignoring historical truth and the memory of the victims murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.”
The post Ukraine reburies Nazi collaborator with state honors, drawing Israeli condemnation appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump administration again sues UCLA over antisemitism, alleging ‘hostile educational environment’
(JTA) — The U.S. Department of Justice sued the University of California for the second time this year over allegations of an antisemitic campus environment at UCLA, claiming the school “was deliberately indifferent to the suffering of its Jewish and Israeli students” after Oct. 7.
The federal lawsuit, filed Tuesday, claims UCLA violated the students’ civil rights by failing to intervene during pro-Palestinian encampment activity in early 2024. It follows an earlier suit that focused on the university’s treatment of its Jewish and Israeli employees, and comes 10 days after the university unveiled its own “Initiative to Combat Antisemitism.”
“Earlier this year, we sued UCLA for subjecting its Jewish and Israeli employees to an antisemitic hostile work environment,” assistant U.S. attorney general Harmeet Dhillon said in a press release. “Now, the Department of Justice calls UCLA to account for its toleration of the equally appalling hostile educational environment against its Jewish and Israeli students.”
Requests for comment to the Justice Department and UCLA were not immediately returned.
The new suit draws on widely reported accounts of UCLA’s campus environment in spring 2024, when protesters in pro-Palestinian encampments clashed with pro-Israel counter-protesters, sparking violence and turmoil. The failure to protect Jewish students violated their Title VI civil rights, attorneys said.
Citing the report of UCLA’s own task force on antisemitism, published in response to the 2024 campus upheaval, the suit states, “UCLA’s leadership apparently preferred a do-nothing ‘de-escalation strategy’ to protecting their Jewish and Israeli students from an angry mob organized by peers armed with tasers, lumber, and a sword.”
The Justice Department is seeking several redress measures, including the return of all federal grants made to UCLA “during the time of UCLA’s noncompliance with Title VI.” The school had previously resolved several Title VI antisemitism cases under the Biden administration, and also reached a $6.13 million settlement with Jewish groups in a private suit related to the spring 2024 incidents on campus — a case cited in DOJ’s new lawsuit.
The Trump administration has sought to make a particular example of UCLA in its aggressive approach to campus antisemitism. Officials had sought to levy fines in excess of $1 billion against the public university for its alleged failure to protect Jewish and Israeli students, until a federal judge intervened. Several DOJ lawyers have left the department over its UCLA investigation, telling reporters the case was “fraudulent,” a “sham” and driven by pressure to “find” evidence to support further legal action against UCLA.
In addition, some of the most violent clashes on the campuses included perpetrators on both sides of the conflict, leading some members of the UCLA Jewish community to complain that pro-Israel counter-protesters ultimately undercut the Jewish students’ legitimate grievances regarding the harassment they had been facing inside the campus gates.
And the campus environment for Jews remains tense. Last month, the UCLA student senate condemned a campus visit by a freed Israeli hostage, drawing blowback from a university regent.
The post Trump administration again sues UCLA over antisemitism, alleging ‘hostile educational environment’ appeared first on The Forward.