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Everyone knows about Herzl. Is it time for Max Nordau, the intermarried father of Zionism, to get his due?
(JTA) — In the weeks since Israel’s latest government was sworn in, questions relating to assimilation, defining Jewish identity and what it means to be a Zionist have been central to the public and political discourse, which in some ways is perhaps more heated and divisive than it has ever been.
One useful addition to the discourse might be recalling the thought and example of an author and Zionist leader who died 100 years ago last month. Max Nordau was a central figure in the early years of the modern political Zionist movement, literally founding the Zionist Organization (today’s World Zionist Organization) with Theodor Herzl and heading multiple Zionist congresses. A physician and renowned man of letters prior to his “conversion” to Zionism following the Dreyfus Affair in France, Nordau’s joining the Zionist movement gave it a notable boost in terms of renown and respectability.
He also coined the term “Muscular Judaism” — a redefinition of what it meant to be a Jew in the modern world; a critical shift away from the traditionally insular, “meek” Jewish archetype devoted solely to religious and intellectual pursuits. The “Muscular Jew” in theory and practice was necessary in order for a modern Jewish state to be established.
Reviving interest in Nordau now is a continuation of a conversation that an Israeli historian kicked off four decades ago. The historian, Yosef Nedava, embarked on a crusade to renew interest in and appreciation of Nordau. Nedava was a proponent of Revisionist Zionism, a movement led by Zeev Jabotinsky and later Menachem Begin that was considered to be the bitter ideological rival to the Labor Zionism of David Ben-Gurion and others. Broadly speaking, Revisionist Zionism was more territorially maximalist when it came to settling the Land of Israel, and favored liberal principles as opposed to the socialist ones championed by Ben-Gurion and his colleagues.
Nedava had a penchant for fighting the battles of unsung heroes of history who he thought should be better remembered. He led a crusade to clear the name of Yosef Lishansky, the founder of the NILI underground movement that assisted the British during World War I who was executed by the Ottomans. He also worked to exonerate fellow Revisionist Zionists accused of murdering Labor Zionist leader Haim Arlozorov — an event that shook Mandatory Palestine in the early 1930s and beyond.
About Nordau, Nedava said at the time, “For 60 years he wasn’t mentioned and he was one of the forgotten figures that only a few streets were named after.”
Nedava’s sentiment was clear, even if his words were somewhat hyperbolic. Nordau had in fact been studied and cited over the years, and there were in fact at least a few streets named after him in Israel. At the official state event marking six decades since Nordau’s death, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin even declared, “We never forgot Max Nordau, his teachings and his historical merits.”
Following Nedava’s efforts leading up to the 60th anniversary of Nordau’s death in 1983, Begin set up an official committee to memorialize the Zionist leader. The committee was tasked with publishing Nordau’s works, establishing events and honoring him in other ways like getting his face on a stamp “and maybe on a monetary bill,” according to Nedava.
But no bill was ever printed with Nordau’s visage, and there’s no question that Nordau never has gotten nearly the credit nor recognition that Herzl received. If the streets referenced by Nedava are any indicator, there are currently a respectable 33 streets named after Nordau in Israel, though that’s just about half of what Herzl’s got. There’s a city called Herzliya, with a massive image of the Zionist founder overlooking one of Israel’s most-trafficked highways. Nordau has a beach in Tel Aviv, a neighborhood in Netanya and a small village far in the north — but no city of his own.
Trees line alongside Nordau Avenue in Tel Aviv, March 4, 2017. (Anat Hermoni/FLASH90)
That’s not to say he didn’t have his fans. The Revisionist movement and Begin’s Herut and Likud parties idolized him, often mentioning and depicting him alongside Herzl and Vladimir Jabotinsky. Revisionist historian Benzion Netanyahu, father of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, greatly admired Nordau, even editing four entire volumes of his writings.
“Alongside Herzl, the Revisionists loved him, as he was a liberal. Yet he was also accepted and respected by those on the other side of the political spectrum,” Hezi Amiur, a scholar of Zionism and the curator of the Israeli Collection at the National Library of Israel, told me.
Like many of his generation and ilk, Nordau, himself the son of a rabbi, rejected religion and tradition as a teenager, opting to join mainstream European secular culture. He changed his name from Simon (Simcha) Maximilian Südfeld to Max Nordau. The shift in surname from Südfeld — meaning “southern field” — to Nordau — meaning “northern meadow” — was very much an intentional act for Nordau, the only son in his religiously observant family who chose northern European Germanic culture over the traditions of his fathers. He even married a Danish Protestant opera singer, a widow and mother of four named Anna Dons-Kaufmann.
In a congratulatory letter sent to Nordau following his marriage to Anna, Herzl, who was also not a particularly observant nor learned Jew, wrote:
Your concerns regarding the attitudes of our zealous circles [within the Zionist movement] regarding your mixed marriage are perhaps exaggerated. … If our project had already been fulfilled today, surely we would not have prevented a Jewish citizen, that is, a citizen of the existing Jewish state, from marrying a foreign-born gentile, through this marriage she would become a Jew without paying attention to her religion. If she has children, they will be Jews anyway.
This particular vision of Herzl’s has certainly not come to fruition, and the topic remains a particularly heated one, continuing to roil the Israeli political system, and — no less — Israel-Diaspora relations.
Similar political forces to those that have kept this particular Herzlian vision at bay may have also been responsible for ensuring that Nordau’s impressively whiskered face never made its way onto Israeli currency.
According to one report, Begin’s Likud government abandoned its efforts to get Nordau’s onto a shekel note in 1983 in order to avoid a potential coalition crisis. The concern was that the religious parties that were part of the ruling coalition could become outraged at the prospect of having someone married to a non-Jew on Israeli money. Whether the report was fully accurate or not, the sentiments behind such a potential coalition scare are certainly familiar to anyone following contemporary Israeli politics.
Nonetheless, perhaps the two most influential religious Zionist rabbis of the 20th century, Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaKohen Kook and his son, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda, not only somewhat overlooked Nordau’s assimilationist tendencies and intermarriage, they even celebrated the man and his vision.
The elder Rabbi Kook, who served as the rabbi of Jaffa, Jerusalem and the Land of Israel in the opening decades of the 1900s, uncompromisingly criticized some of Nordau’s views, especially with respect to the separation of religion from Zionism. But he was a big fan of Nordau’s “Muscular Judaism,” writing among other things, that:
…a healthy body is what we need, we have been very busy with the soul, we have forgotten the sanctity of the body, we have neglected physical health and strength, we have forgotten that we have holy flesh, no less than we have the holy spirit… Through the strength of the flesh the weakened soul will be enlightened, the resurrection of the dead in their bodies.
Decades later his son, likely the most influential Israeli religious Zionist spiritual leader until his death in 1982, defined Nordau (as well as seminal Hebrew poet Shaul Tchernichovsky, who also married a non-Jew) as a “baal tshuvah” — a term imprecisely translated as “penitent” that is generally used to refer to non-observant Jews who become more religiously observant. Yehuda based his designation on a Talmudic teaching that “Anyone who transgresses and is ashamed of it is forgiven for all of his sins.”
Like anyone, Max Nordau probably regretted and felt ashamed of various decisions and actions in his life, but marrying a non-Jewish woman does not seem to be one of them. He and Anna stayed married for decades until his death in 1923.
Both Kooks were able to overlook the decidedly non-religious (if not outright anti-religious) life Nordau chose to lead. Instead of his personal choices, they focused on the central contribution he made to ensuring the reestablishment of a Jewish home in its ancestral land.
The majority of Israel’s current ruling coalition claims to be the ideological descendants of Begin and the Rabbis Kook, men who managed to have great admiration for the teachings and achievements of Nordau, even if they may have found his anti-religious, assimilationist tendencies and intermarriage reprehensible. Nedava wanted Israel to learn from Nordau 40 years ago. It’s possible the country still could today — if only the striking level of tolerance and respect with which he was considered in the past can still be summoned.
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The post Everyone knows about Herzl. Is it time for Max Nordau, the intermarried father of Zionism, to get his due? appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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The stories of Passover and Pittsburgh share a common humanity
At the heart of the Passover story is an act of courage that feels both ancient and urgent.
Before the plagues, before the parting of the Red Sea, a man named Moses made a brave choice. Saved and raised by the Pharaoh’s daughter, he could have looked away from the suffering of others. But instead, Moses recognized his connection to and the humanity of the Israelites, insisting that Pharaoh let his people go.
We often tell the Passover story as one of liberation, and it is. But it is also a story about the risk of crossing divides in society and the tension between extending an open hand or isolating yourself.
That tension is not confined to ancient Egypt: it persists within the Jewish community today. In the wake of the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, much of the conversation understandably focused on security, accountability and the urgent need to confront antisemitism directly. The intensity and urgency of that conversation has only increased as Jewish Americans face more hate than ever in our post-Oct. 7 reality. Security and accountability are essential. But on its own, hardening our institutions is not enough. We must also engage in the hard work of educating and building connections across lines of difference.
Hate festers in the absence of relationships across those boundaries, and confronting it requires human connection. When we build compassionate, healthy communities, we begin to heal the persistent societal wounds, such as antisemitism and hatred, that divide us.
In the days and weeks following the attack in Pittsburgh, something remarkable happened: communities that could have remained distant instead drew closer. Muslim neighbors raised money to help cover the cost of funerals and Christian congregations opened their doors, providing the Tree of Life Congregation a safe place for worship services and to gather in community. In those dark days, Pittsburghers, and people from near and far, prayed, cried and raised their voices in song together. They modeled a response to hate rooted in shared humanity.
Passover asks something similar of us. Each year at the Seder table, we are instructed not simply to retell the story but to see ourselves within it, to remember what it felt like to be strangers in a strange land. The Passover Haggadah commands us to welcome the stranger as we were once strangers in the land of Egypt.
The story is a call to action, asking us to recognize the common roots that unite us all. If we are to truly embrace the stranger, then our work must extend beyond our own community and bring people of different backgrounds together to cultivate mutual understanding and learn more about our neighbors. That mandate guides our work at The Tree of Life. We are building a new institution rooted in Pittsburgh with national impact, dedicated to inspiring courageous action and creating compassionate communities. We are bringing people together to engage with one another and to stay connected even when it is hard.
Our programs focus on inquiry, connection, and community engagement, remembering our past and celebrating Jewish tradition and joy. For example, the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh, one of our core programs, worked closely with Lily Sassani, a local Girl Scout, to develop a Holocaust Education patch, which is now available to all Girl Scouts. The LIGHT Education Initiative, our cornerstone education program, hosts the Eradicate Hate Student Summit, which in 2025 brought together 450 attendees and, with the support of the Grable Foundation and Benedum Foundation, offered $1,000 grants to 34 schools in southwestern Pennsylvania to design and deliver programming on their campuses.
We’re also sharing the story of what happened on Oct. 27, 2018, the history of antisemitism in America and our work to uproot hate in a traveling exhibition visiting communities across the country, beginning in Pittsburgh and next headed to Broward County, Florida, home to Parkland, another community sadly shaped by tragedy. The exhibition offers a peek into what we will be doing in Pittsburgh at the site of the deadliest antisemitic attack in United States history.
Empathy and understanding are powerful antidotes to hate. Developing both is slow, but important. Beloved Squirrel Hill resident Mr. Rogers knew this and exemplified it. He famously responded to racist ideas of his time, not through loud condemnation but by modeling a different way forward. Amid contentious debates over segregated pools, he invited a Black character, Officer Clemmons, to join him in cooling his feet in a small wading pool and sharing a towel. He didn’t argue; he demonstrated.
We are not naive, nor do we think there is a single answer to the challenges and divisions we all face. What we do know, however, is that at the same time that antisemitism has increased exponentially in recent years, divides are deepening and isolation is rising. Pew Research suggests that approximately eight in ten Americans say they cannot even trust people of different political opinions to agree on basic facts.
When antisemitism is rising and trust is waning, the instinct is often to pull back; to ignore the forces of good at work and hide behind walls. Imagine if Moses had remained in Midian, continuing his exile. Ours would be a very different story.
Instead, Moses stepped out in faith and sought community. For the truth is, liberation is not only about moving past a place of discomfort, grief and hardship. It is about what we choose to build afterward and who we bring along the way. Only by recognizing our common humanity and building bridges across lines of difference can we bring about the better future that the youngest people seated at our Seder tables deserve.
The post The stories of Passover and Pittsburgh share a common humanity appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump Says US May Exit Iran War Soon, Threatens to Quit NATO
Emergency personnel operate around a destroyed car following a targeted Israeli strike, amid escalating hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, as the US-Israel conflict with Iran continues, in Beirut, Lebanon, March 31, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
The United States will end its war on Iran fairly soon and could return for “spot hits” if needed, President Donald Trump told Reuters on Wednesday, hours before he was scheduled to make a primetime address to the nation.
Trump also said he would state in the speech, which is due at 9 pm EDT (0100 GMT on Thursday), that he was considering withdrawing the US from the NATO alliance.
Asked when the United States would consider the Iran war over, Trump said: “I can’t tell you exactly … we’re going to be out pretty quickly.”
He was expected to reiterate a two-to-three-week timetable for ending the war in Iran during the address, a White House official later said.
US action had ensured Iran would not have nuclear arms, Trump said: “They won’t have a nuclear weapon because they are incapable of that now, and then I’ll leave, and I’ll take everybody with me, and if we have to, we’ll come back to do spot hits.”
An Iranian official, Mehdi Tabatabai, said in a post on X that an important letter to the American people from Iran‘s President Masoud Pezeshkian would be released “in a few hours.”
TRUMP CONSIDERS QUITTING NATO
Global oil supplies were expected to be hit twice as hard this month as in March, the International Energy Agency said on Wednesday, underlining the urgent need for an end to the conflict Trump began with Israel on Feb. 28.
Trump said separately on social media that Iran had asked for a ceasefire but that he would not consider it until Tehran ceased blocking the Strait of Hormuz, a major fuel shipment route. Iran denied making any such request.
Two security sources from Pakistan, which is mediating in the conflict, earlier told Reuters that Islamabad had proposed a temporary ceasefire to both sides but had not heard back from either.
US Vice President JD Vance communicated with intermediaries from Pakistan about the Iran conflict as recently as Tuesday, a source briefed on the matter told Reuters on Wednesday. At Trump‘s direction, Vance signaled privately that Trump was open to a ceasefire as long as certain US demands were met, including reopening the Strait of Hormuz, the source said.
Trump had signaled on Tuesday he could wind down the war in two to three weeks even without a deal, and scaled up threats to pull the US out of the NATO defense alliance if European states did not help stop Iran threatening the waterway.
In his remarks to Reuters on Wednesday, Trump said he would express his disgust with NATO for what he considers the alliance’s lack of support for US objectives in Iran.
European states took pains to appear unruffled, and France’s junior army minister Alice Rufo said operations by NATO in the Strait of Hormuz would be a breach of international law.
JET FUEL AND DIESEL SHORTAGE
The conflict has spread across the region and caused major energy disruption.
IEA head Fatih Birol said the main issue so far from Iran‘s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz was the lack of jet fuel and diesel that was already a problem in Asia and would hit Europe in April or May.
The head of European budget airline Ryanair said jet fuel supply to Europe could be disrupted from June if the conflict did not end in the next month, potentially forcing the airline and rivals to consider cancelling summer season flights.
Businesses around the world are struggling, with cosmetics and tea among the latest sectors to report difficulties.
However, global stocks rallied and oil prices fell almost 3% as hopes of a de-escalation fueled the biggest rebound in regional equities in more than three years.
Higher fuel prices are already weighing on US household finances before the November midterm elections, with two-thirds of Americans believing the US should work to exit the Iran war quickly, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found.
TANKER HIT OFF QATAR
Drones hit fuel tanks at Kuwait’s international airport, causing a big blaze, and authorities in Bahrain reported a fire at an undisclosed company facility from an Iranian attack.
Qatar said an oil tanker leased to state-owned QatarEnergy was hit by an Iranian cruise missile in Qatari waters, but that there were no injuries or environmental damage.
An overnight strike hit Shahid Haghani Port, Iran‘s largest passenger terminal, deputy regional governor Ahmad Nafisi told state media, calling it a “criminal” attack on civilian infrastructure.
Iran has fired repeatedly on Gulf countries, some home to US bases, during the conflict, and is using the Strait of Hormuz, a conduit for a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas, as a bargaining chip.
Iran‘s Revolutionary Guards have threatened to hit US companies in the region including Microsoft, Google, Apple, Intel, IBM, Tesla, and Boeing, from 8 pm Tehran time (1630 GMT) on Wednesday. Trump has said he was not concerned.
LATEST STRIKES
In Tel Aviv on Wednesday, evening air raid sirens and air defense systems were repeatedly triggered as Iran fired a volley of missiles around an hour before the start of Passover, the Jewish festival of freedom.
Israel’s fire and rescue service said there had been multiple “impacts” in the greater Tel Aviv area. It was not immediately clear if the impacts were caused by missile strikes or debris from missile interceptions.
Shortly after the latest Iranian attack, the Israeli military said in a statement that the Air Force was carrying out strikes on dozens of targets across Tehran.
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UK Police Arrest 3 More Men Over Arson Attack on Jewish Community Ambulances
Charred remains of ambulances belonging to Hatzola, a Jewish community organization, which were set on fire in an incident that the police say is being treated as an antisemitic hate crime, in northwest London, Britain, March 23, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Hannah McKay
British police said on Wednesday they had arrested three more men in connection with an arson attack on Jewish community ambulances in north London last month.
The ambulances were set on fire on March 23 in what British Prime Minister Keir Starmer described as a “deeply shocking antisemitic arson attack.”
The SITE Intelligence website has said an Iran-aligned multinational militant collective called Islamic Movement of the People of the Right Hand had claimed responsibility for the incident near a synagogue in the Golders Green area of London.
Counter-terrorism officers are heading the investigation, but as yet the incident is not being treated as terrorism.
The Metropolitan Police said the three men, aged 20, 19, and 17, had been arrested at separate addresses in east London on suspicion of conspiracy to commit arson with intent to endanger life.
Two were British nationals, while the third was a dual British-Pakistani national. Last week, detectives detained two British nationals aged in their 40s and later released both on police bail.
“We know concern among the Jewish community remains high, but I hope these arrests show that we are doing everything we can to bring those responsible to justice,” said Commander Helen Flanagan, Head of Counter Terrorism Policing London.