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Diaspora alarm over Israel: Your guide to what the critics are saying
(JTA) — I started reporting on North American Jews and Israel in the last century, and for years covered the debate over whether Jews in the Diaspora had a right to criticize the Israeli government in public. The debate sort of petered out in the early-1990s, when Israel itself began talking about a Palestinian state, and when right-wing groups then decided criticizing Israel was a mitzvah.
Nevertheless, while left-wing groups like J Street and T’ruah have long been comfortable criticizing the Israeli government or defending Palestinian rights, many in the centrist “mainstream” — pulpit clergy, leaders of federations and Hillels, average Jews nervous about spoiling a family get-together — have preferred to keep their concerns to themselves. Partly this is tactical: Few rabbis want to alienate any of their members over so divisive a topic, and in the face of an aggressive left, organizational leaders did not want to give fuel to Israel’s ideological enemies. (The glaring exception has been about Israeli policy toward non-Orthodox Judaism, which is seen as very much the Disapora’s business.)
In recent weeks, there has been an emerging literature of what I have come to think of as “reluctant dissent.” What these essays and sermons have in common, despite the different political persuasions of the authors, is a deep concern over Israel’s “democratic character.” They cite judicial reforms that would weaken checks and balances at the top, expansion of Jewish settlements that would make it impossible to separate from the Palestinians, and the Orthodox parties that want to strengthen their hold on religious affairs. As Abe Foxman, who as former director of the Anti-Defamation League rarely criticized Israel, told an interviewer, “If Israel ceases to be an open democracy, I won’t be able to support it.”
I read through the various ways Jewish leaders and writers here and in Israel are not just justifying Diaspora Jews who are protesting what is happening in Israel, but providing public permission for others to do the same. Here is what a few of them are saying (with a word from a defender of the government):
‘I didn’t sleep much last night’
Yehuda Kurtzer: Facebook, Feb. 8
Kurtzer is the president of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, the New York-based branch of the Israeli think tank that promotes a diverse, engaged relationship with Israel. In a recent blog post, he neatly describes the dilemma of Diaspora Zionists who aren’t sure what to do with their deep concerns about the direction of the Israel government, especially the concentration of power in a far-right legislative branch.
Centrist American Jews who care about Israel are caught between “those to our right who would see any expression of even uncertainty about Israel’s democratic character as disloyalty, [and] those on the other side who think that a conversation about Israeli democracy is already past its prime,” he writes. He is also concerned about the “widespread disengagement that we can expect among American Jews, what I fear will become the absent majority — those who decide that however the current crisis is resolved, all of this is just ‘not for them.’”
Kurtzer likens Israel to a palace, and Diaspora Jews as “passersby” who live beyond its walls. Nonetheless, he feels responsible for what happens there. “The palace is burning and the best we can do is to tell you,” he writes. “It is also how we will show you we love you, and how much we cherish the palace.”
An open letter to Israel’s friends in North America
Matti Friedman, Yossi Klein Halevi and Daniel Gordis: Times of Israel, Feb. 7
Three high-profile writers who moved to Israel from North America and who often defend Israel against its critics in the United States — Gordis, for one, has written a book arguing that American Jewish liberalism is incompatible with Israel’s “ethnic democracy” — now urge Diaspora Jews to speak out against the current Israeli government. They don’t mention the territories or religious pluralism. Instead, their trigger is the proposed effort to reform the Supreme Court, which they say will “eviscerate the independence of our judiciary and remake the country’s democratic identity.” Such a move will “threaten Israeli-American relations, and it will do grave damage to our relations with you, our sisters and brothers in the Diaspora,” concluding, “We need your voice to help us preserve Israel as a state both Jewish and democratic.”
All Israel Is Responsible for Each Other
Rabbi Angela Buchdahl: Sermon, Jan. 27
Buchdahl, the senior rabbi of New York City’s Reform Central Synagogue, isn’t looking to Israeli writers for permission to weigh in on Israel’s political scene. In a sermon that takes its name from a rabbinic statement of Jewish interdependence, she asserts without question that Jews everywhere have a stake in the future of Israel and have a right to speak up for “civil society and democracy and religious pluralism and human rights” there. She focuses on the religious parties who are convinced that “Reform Jews are ruining Israel,” as you might expect, but ends the sermon with a call to recognize the rights of all Israeli citizens, Jewish and non-Jewish, “and also those living under Israel’s military control.” Of those Palestinians, she says, “We can’t feel comfortable sitting in the light of sovereignty next to a community living in darkness and expect to have peace.”
And like Kurtzer, she worries that concerned American Jews will simply turn away from Israel in despair or embarrassment, and urges congregants to support the Israeli and American organizations that share their pluralistic vision for Israel.
On That Distant Day
Hillel Halkin: Jewish Review of Books, Winter 2023
In his 1977 book “Letters to an American Jewish Friend: A Zionist Polemic,” the translator and author Hillel Halkin made a distinction similar to Kurtzer’s image of Israel as a palace and the Diaspora as passersby: Jews who don’t emigrate to Israel are dooming themselves to irrelevance, while immigrants like him are living on the stage where the Jewish future would play out. His mournful essay doesn’t address the Diaspora, per se, although it creates a permission structure for Zionists abroad to criticize the government. Halkin sees the new government as a coalition of two types of religious zealots: the haredi Orthodox who want to consolidate their control of religious life (and funding) in Israel, and a “knit-skullcap electorate [that] is hypernationalist and Jewish supremacist in its attitude toward Arabs.” (A knit skullcap is a symbol for what an American might call the “Modern Orthodox.”) Together, these growing and powerful constituents represent “the end of an Israeli consensus about what is and is not permissible in a democracy — and once the rules are no longer agreed on, political chaos is not far away. Israel has never been in such a place before.”
Halkin does talk about Israeli expansion in the West Bank, saying he long favored Jewish settlement in the territories, while believing that the “only feasible solution” would be a two-state solution with Arabs living in the Jewish state and Jews living in the Arab one. Instead, Israel has reached a point where there is “too much recrimination, too much distrust, too much hatred, too much blind conviction, too much disdain for the notion of a shared humanity, for such a solution to be possible… We’re over the cliff and falling, and no one knows how far down the ground is.”
Method to Our Madness: A Response to Hillel Halkin
Ze’ev Maghen: Jewish Review of Books, Jan. 10, 2023
Ze’ev Maghen, chair of the department of Middle East studies at Bar-Ilan University, is hardly a dissenter; instead, his response to Halkin helpfully represents the views of those who voted for the current government. Maghen says the new coalition represents a more honest expression of Zionism than those who support a “liberal, democratic, egalitarian, inclusive, individualist, environmentally conscious, economically prosperous, globally connected, etc., etc., society.” The new government he writes, will defend Israel’s “Jewish nationalist raison d’être, and keep at bay those universalist, Western-based notions that are geared by definition to undermine nationalism in all its forms.” As for the Palestinian issue, he writes, “I’d rather have a fierce, hawkish Zionist in the cockpit than a progressive, Westernized wimp for whom this land, and the people who have returned to it after two millennia of incomparable suffering, don’t mean all that much.”
The Tears of Zion
Rabbi Sharon Brous: Sermon, Feb. 4, 2023
Brous, rabbi of the liberal Ikar community in Los Angeles, doesn’t just defend the right of Diaspora Jews to speak out in defense of Israeli democracy and Palestinian rights, but castigates Jewish leaders and communities who have been reluctant to criticize Israel in the past. “No, this government is not an electoral accident, and it is not an anomaly,” she says. “This moment of extremism has been a long time in the making and our silence has made us complicit.”
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He sold a house to Justin Bieber. Now this LA investor has given Chabad $100M to build one of the world’s largest Jewish centers.
(JTA) — A Los Angeles real estate investor known for selling homes to celebrities has donated a $100 million office tower to Chabad, the global Orthodox Jewish outreach movement, to create what is slated to become one the world’s largest Jewish centers.
Alon Abady and his wife, Monique, transferred the 16-story, 300,000-square-foot complex at 9911 W. Pico Blvd. to Chabad of California, which plans to transform it into the Chabad Campus for Jewish Life.
The property sits in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood, the heart of Jewish Los Angeles, down the street from the Museum of Tolerance and near the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Fox Studios and, since 2023, the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, a Conservative movement seminary.
Chabad officials say the building was appraised last fall at $103 million, making it one of the largest single gifts ever to a Jewish organization. The new campus is expected to serve as a regional hub for Jewish religious life, social services and education, as well as a global center for the Lubavitch movement’s worldwide network of emissaries.
The campus will include a synagogue, life-cycle venues, youth and senior programs, mental-health and social services, museums and support for Jewish students on college campuses, along with facilities for large communal and international gatherings.
“It will be an epicenter of Jewish life,” said Rabbi Chaim Nochum Cunin, one of the leaders of West Coast Chabad. “It will transform the landscape of Jewish life in Los Angeles and throughout the world.”
Abady, who works as a managing partner of Waterfall Bridge Capital, paid $35 million for the property in 2023 with plans to redevelop it. The current market value of $103 million reflects an appraisal by Partner Valuation Advisors conducted in September, according to Rabbi Motti Seligson, director of public relations for Chabad’s headquarters in Brooklyn.
Abady is best known for high-profile real estate deals in Los Angeles, including the $96 million purchase of the Sofitel Beverly Hills hotel in 2021. He has also been involved in a series of widely noted residential transactions, including buying and later selling Simon Cowell’s former Beverly Hills home and selling a property to Justin and Hailey Bieber.
The campus will rank among the largest Jewish institutions in the world. It will be smaller than Chabad’s 538,000-square-foot Menorah Center in Dnipro, Ukraine, but larger than most Jewish community centers in North America and comparable in scale to New York’s 92nd Street Y, which also includes residential and non-Jewish cultural facilities.
Abady said his gift reflects a long-standing relationship with Chabad that dates back to his family’s arrival in Los Angeles in the 1970s, when they were assisted by Rabbi Baruch Shlomo Cunin, Chabad’s West Coast director.
“This is a lifelong dream that also allows me to honor my parents and my children,” Abady said in a statement. “When my family immigrated to Los Angeles in the 1970s, Chabad was there for us. That was never forgotten.”
The announcement comes at a moment when many Jewish institutions are under financial strain. In Los Angeles, it follows the recent sale of the American Jewish University’s historic Bel Air campus. The 22-acre hilltop property was transferred in 2024 to Milken Community School, its neighboring Jewish middle and high school, and AJU’s rabbinical school, Ziegler, moved to Pico-Robertson.
While the final purchase price was not publicly disclosed, the sale was widely reported to be in the roughly $60 million range, allowing Milken to expand its campus as AJU consolidated its operations.
The post He sold a house to Justin Bieber. Now this LA investor has given Chabad $100M to build one of the world’s largest Jewish centers. appeared first on The Forward.
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Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair wears ‘stop the genocide’ eye black
(JTA) — In his postgame interview on Monday night, Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair said the things you’d expect to hear, like crediting his teammates for a dominant playoff win and praising his coach.
But on the Pro Bowler’s eye black was a message that you don’t see every day on ESPN: “STOP THE GENOCIDE.”
Al-Shaair, who is Muslim, has long been a vocal pro-Palestinian advocate.
In December 2023, as a member of the Tennessee Titans, Al-Shaair chose to support the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund through the NFL’s “My Cause, My Cleats” program.
“Given the recent events in Israel and Gaza, this nonprofit provides medical aid and essential supplies to children injured and left homeless by the bombings in Gaza,” he said in his entry about the charity.
Al-Shaair supported the same charity in 2024 and 2025 as a member of the Texans, and has worn cleats that read “FREE” on one side, referring to the “Free Palestine” movement, and “Surely to Allah we belong and to him we will all return” on the other. The cleats also featured the text, “AT LEAST 41,788 Palestinians killed, 10,000+ estimated to be under the rubble, 96,974 wounded.”
Al-Shaair has also signaled criticism for Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza, about which he’s become an outspoken advocate on and off the field.
“I feel like it’s something that’s trying to be silenced,” Al-Shaair told the Houston news site Chron in 2024. “On either side, people losing their life is not right. In no way, shape or form am I validating anything that happened, but to consistently say that because of [Oct. 7] innocent people [in Gaza] should now die, it’s crazy.”
Al-Shaair was one of two active NFL players who signed onto the “Athletes for Ceasefire” letter, which called on President Joe Biden to call for a ceasefire in February 2024.
The Texans named Al-Shaair as their club winner for the 2025 Walter Payton Man of the Year Award, which recognizes “players who excel on the field and show exceptional dedication to uplifting their communities with consistent, positive impact.”
A post on the Texans’ website details Al-Shaair’s charitable work including support for homeless youth and adults, hosting a movie night at NRG Stadium for HYPE Freedom School students, and providing free tickets and food for students from the Muslim Organization of Sports, Socials and Education. His pro-Palestinian advocacy is not mentioned in the post.
While the linebacker has been vocal about his pro-Palestine views, Monday night’s postgame interview with Scott van Pelt — during which he said nothing about Israel or Gaza, but had an eye black message big enough to read during his close-ups — may have been his loudest form of advocacy yet, as it came shortly after a nationally televised playoff game on ESPN. Video of the interview has circulated on social media and drawn praise from pro-Palestinian activists.
“This is how you use your platform. Proud of you brother,” wrote Omar Suleiman, an imam and activist with over 1 million followers.
According to the NFL rulebook, players are “prohibited from wearing, displaying, or otherwise conveying personal messages either in writing or illustration, unless such message has been approved in advance by the League office.” The rule also states that the league “will not grant permission” to players displaying a message “to political activities or causes, other non-football events, causes or campaigns, or charitable causes or campaigns.”
The most notable case of political activism in the NFL in the last decade came when Colin Kaepernick, protesting police brutality, refused to stand for the national anthem. Kaepernick was not issued a fine or suspension by the NFL, though no teams signed him as a 29-year-old free agent, leading to debate over whether he was blackballed by the league for his stance.
Players have previously been fined for wearing eye black with personal messages, though they had not gotten league approval before their games. Al-Shaair has not been issued a fine.
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What the ‘synagogue of Satan’ slur tells us about Christian antisemitism
The man charged with arson in the burning of Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, Miss., called the institution a “synagogue of Satan” in an interview with authorities, according to an FBI affidavit.
The phrase, originating in the New Testament book of Revelation, has been used in recent years to attack Jews, making its way into graffiti on Jewish institutions, antisemitic conspiracy theories and in far-right commentator Candace Owens’ criticism of Jewish figures.
But its meaning is not necessarily consistent: “Synagogue of Satan” has been used to refer to a supposed Jewish conspiracy to control the U.S. government, as a broad indictment of Jewish people as Satanic and as a narrow critique against Jewish people perceived as behaving badly. It has been used by Christian nationalists and by Nation of Islam leaders.
It remains unclear how the term made its way into the vocabulary of Stephen Spencer Pittman, who was arrested the day of the attack. Pittman, 19, followed dozens of Instagram accounts that share motivational Bible quotes and created a website promoting “scripture-backed fitness.” But his public social media activity apparently only turned antisemitic on Jan. 10, when he shared an antisemitic cartoon and confessed to setting fire to Beth Israel.
Origin of a slur
The book of Revelations, the last book of the New Testament, uses the phrase twice in a message of comfort to Jesus’ followers facing persecution, castigating “the synagogue of Satan who say that they are Jews and are not.” The implication is that the early Christians’ persecutors are perverting the meaning of Judaism to further their ends.
Christian scholars note that the author of Revelations was likely Jewish. Nevertheless, the phrase has come to serve as a catch-all to justify antisemitism by claiming that Jews are inherently Satanic, or out of favor with God’s plans for the world.
Its popularization as an antisemitic term may originate in the Christian Identity movement, a group of white evangelical extremists who believe that the true descendants of Adam are the white race, and the Jews are descendants of Cain — who in their view, is the offspring of Eve and Satan. The Christian Identity movement, which dates back to the early 20th century, peaked in the 1980s and 1990s, but it left a lasting impression on far-right theology.
The influential Evangelical leader Rev. Billy Graham — known as “America’s pastor” for his ubiquitous TV presence — infamously used the phrase in a 1973 conversation with then-President Richard Nixon, who at the time was complaining about Jews purportedly controlling the US media. (Graham apologized for his comments nearly 30 years later, after a recording of the conversation became public.)
Graham’s use of the term underscored a key connection between Christian Zionism and antisemitism. He told Nixon in that recorded conversation that while he supported Israel, Jewish people didn’t understand his real feelings about them, which is that there were two types of Jews: conservative ones who supported Graham and his ministry, and the “synagogue of Satan” — liberal-minded ones and especially Jews who worked in media.
Fuel on the fire
In recent years, the term has come to be applied more creatively. Controversial rapper Jay Electronica used it in a song in 2014. Nation of Islam leader Abdul Haleem Muhammad blamed the synagogue of Satan in 2016 for a supposed plot to de-masculinize American black men through marijuana. A group of neo-Nazi agitators that has flyered neighborhoods around the country with propaganda draped a banner over a Los Angeles freeway with the phrase in Oct. 2022.
If the term can be said to have a “power user” today, it would be Owens, the far-right commentator who has promoted a range of antisemitic conspiracy theories, including Frankism and the notion that Israel was behind Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
Owens has accused Jewish conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, and “radical Zionists” of being members of the synagogue of Satan.
But Owens is merely one of a slew of right-wing agitators who have accelerated use of the term in recent months.
Andrew Torba, the chief executive officer of the far-right social media hotbed Gab, posted an entire essay last fall — titled “Naming the Synagogue of Satan” — saying Christendom was under threat because the US had been captured “with AIPAC donations” and “Hollywood propaganda.”
As recently as Dec. 2025, a far-right podcaster in Colorado called for the execution of Gov. Jared Polis and other Jewish state democrats, referring to them as “Synagogue of Satan Jews.”
Just a few weeks later, Beth Israel Congregation, the oldest synagogue in Mississippi, was slapped with the moniker the day it went up in flames.
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