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For one group of friends separated by geography, a single Israel experience builds lifelong bonds
When Ashley Inbar of Portland, Maine, got married in a traditional Jewish ceremony at the Jamaican beach resort of Ocho Rios in early January, there were five very special names on the guest list.
Just half a decade earlier, they were all complete strangers.
But then they met in Israel on an unusual Birthright trip geared toward “older participants” — those ages 27 to 32 — and forged bonds that have only grown over the years. When that 2018 trip drew to a close, six of them resolved to hold annual in-person reunions, despite the vast geographical distances that separate them.
“Pretty much right when we got home, we started planning to meet up somewhere,” said Inbar, who heads fundraising for the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine. “Our first trip was to Denver, then we traveled north to Redstone, Colorado, and stayed for the weekend. As soon as we end one trip, we start planning the next one. We see each other as often as we can, and we talk every day through group chats on Instagram.”
The tight bonds established by the six friends — Inbar, Tim Campbell, Max Staplin, Carly Herbst, Simon Muller and Jared Glassman — are part of the goal of Birthright Israel, which seeks to offer participants a “life-changing experience.”
While forging bonds between Diaspora Jews and Israel is the main purpose of the trips, which are given to participants at no cost to them, the 10-day Birthright experience also aims to strengthen both participants’ Jewish identity and their connection to fellow Jews (including Israelis). Countless long-lasting friendships and romances that started on Birthright have blossomed into marriages and Jewish families.
From Inbar’s group five years ago, the vast majority of participants are still in touch, she said.
“There were 38 of us, and our entire group got along really well,” Inbar said. “We were all at similar places in life, and all of us already had careers. Even today, 95% of us are still connected through social media.”
During the pandemic, when the six couldn’t meet up in person, they held biweekly Zoom chats where they’d talk for hours on end, playing games and discussing the ups and downs of their lives — including engagements, illnesses, deaths of family members and job promotions — as well as their shared memories of their Israel experience.
Ashley Inbar, third from right, with her Birthright friends celebrates her January 6, 2023, wedding on the beach in Ocho Rios, Jamaica. (Courtesy of Ashley Inbar)
The group also stayed in touch with the Israeli security guard, Gal, who escorted them on the trip. Gal video-chats with the group at times of conflict in Israel to share his experiences on the ground — and at other times to practice his English. “He just became an integral part of our collective experience, and I think it was as impactful for him as it was for us,” Inbar said.
Staplin, 36, a franchise attorney in Philadelphia, says the 2018 Birthright trip was one of the best experiences of his life. While the tours to the Dead Sea and Masada were amazing and the vibrancy of Tel Aviv unforgettable, he said, what remains with him most are the friendships he formed during those 10 days.
“We’d stay up till 1 a.m. every night talking. We knew then that we’d be friends for the rest of our lives,” Staplin said. “We decided to have a reunion every year. The first was in New Orleans, then the next year we visited Ashley in Maine. As we were figuring out where to do the next reunion, Ashley got engaged.”
Since 1999, more than 800,000 young Jews from 68 countries have visited Israel on free 10-day trips offered through Birthright, known in Hebrew as Taglit (Discovery). The vast majority were 18 to 26, but from mid-2018 until recently some 13,000 Jews in the 27 to 32 age bracket got to visit Israel as well, according to Noa Bauer, Birthright’s vice president of global marketing.
Now that the pandemic has ended and trips to Israel are back in full force, the organization is seeing its highest demand ever and can’t accommodate all would-be participants without raising additional funds.
“Given the limited spots, we went back to the original age group of 18 to 26,” Bauer said, “though we did allow those who missed out during Covid to participate this past summer as a last chance even if they aged out during the pandemic.”
On Inbar’s trip, the cohort of older Birthright participants included two married couples and several people with children, including her.
Visiting Israel at an older age made all the difference to Glassman, a 36-year-old firefighter in New Orleans. He cited “a much higher maturity level” as one of the advantages of doing Birthright when he did.
“At 18 or 19, I wouldn’t have appreciated it as much,” Glassman said. “Everyone on our group really wanted to be there. In my case, as a young adult, I became much closer to my local Jewish community. I’m a pretty active member of my temple, Touro Synagogue, so when Birthright opened that slot for my age group, it was almost like it was meant to be.”
Staplin said that what really stood out from his experience was the 360-degree view of Israeli life and history that the Birthright trip gave him – not something he could have gotten on a typical vacation.
Six participants of a 2018 Birthright Israel trip gather for their annual reunion in 2022 in New Orleans, Louisiana. (Courtesy of Ashley Inbar)
“The most meaningful part was gaining an understanding of what day-to-day life is like in a country with so much history but still in the middle of so much conflict in present times,” he said. “Watching the people of Tel Aviv just going about their regular work days despite the announcement of the largest rocket attacks in years. Taking a bus ride through the middle of nowhere to Masada and learning about what happened there centuries before America was discovered, and then seeing the daily struggles of the Bedouins the next day. Going from the Western Wall to the Mahane Yehuda Market. Eating schnitzel in a kibbutz and then eating fancy Thai-fusion food at a restaurant in Tel Aviv.”
Herbst was 32 when she went on Birthright. Until then, she said, her travel priorities were to visit countries other than Israel, even though her older brother had gone on Birthright and had a positive experience.
“I wasn’t that interested at the age when you’re supposed to go,” Herbst said. “But our group had a different perspective. We weren’t looking just to get a free trip. Even my Jewish identity was certainly different for me in my 30s than in my 20s.”
Now 37, Herbst works in business development at a New York City tech startup.
“For me, what’s special about Israel is the enduring history of religion, and not only of Judaism,” she said. “Even seeing how strong of a presence Islam and Christianity has there was really fascinating for me. There’s no other place in the world where you see that.”
Muller, 37, grew up outside Rochester, New York, and was supposed to go on Birthright in his mid-20s. But a month before his planned trip, Muller lost his job after the congressional office where he was working in Washington, D.C., suddenly closed. He never got around to rescheduling the Israel trip, and then he aged out.
Nearly six years later, he said, he got an email that Birthright was doing a pilot program for older Jews.
“It was just before my 32nd birthday, I didn’t know anybody else,” Muller recalled. “It was a shot in the dark. I had low expectations.”
The trip turned out to be one of the milestones in his life.
“I found people I really clicked with,” said Muller, now an international trade consultant in Seattle. “We all live in different places and have different interests, but Birthright really bonded us. It’s been a wonderful experience.”
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Our communal definition of Jewish security is too limited. We need a wider one.
On Saturday mornings, I walk through metal detectors on my way into synagogue. I’m aware of why they’re there, and I feel grateful they exist.
My husband, who works at a Jewish day school, is grateful too for the security and cameras keeping an eye on the campus. In 2025, our places of faith require us to invest thoughtfully in safety.
These actions make us more safe, but is that all we need to feel more secure? If you ask me, the way we talk about “security” falls short.
In July, Jewish leaders applauded when Congress approved $274.5 million in federal security funding for nonprofits, including synagogues and Jewish community centers. The applause was deserved. In an era of heightened antisemitism, these dollars matter.
And yet, if our definition of “Jewish security” starts at cameras and locks, and stops with security guards, then it is incomplete. True security must also mean that Jews can afford to see a doctor, put food on the table, and secure a living wage.
The same budget Congress passed in July also cost Jewish households billions of dollars in security, literally. Alongside countless cuts, the administration eliminated more than $1 trillion from healthcare programs that make it possible for millions of Americans to fill a diabetes prescription or access preventative care like a mammogram. The largest of those programs is Medicaid.
I remember when my grandfather’s care needs for his Alzheimer’s ramped up, and I wondered, who was paying for this? For so many families, including mine, the answer in that moment is Medicaid. Today, one in 11 American Jews relies on it. Medicaid is the insurance that provides Holocaust survivors with home health care aids, covers therapy for young queer Jews at Jewish Family Service agencies, and ensures Jewish babies are born without their parents adding the bill to their credit card debt. For more than 650,000 Jews, Medicaid is security. For them, a cut to Medicaid is not abstract; it’s a threat to their lives.
When I read the results of a new study on American Jewish finances, I had to read them again. Twenty-nine percent of Jews say they are struggling or just barely making ends meet, up from 20 percent in 2020. If you’re feeling stretched right now, it is not just you.
And painfully, while 66% of Jews with financial stability believe the community takes care of people in need, only 39 percent of low-income Jews agree. We are a community that prides itself on mutual responsibility, but we are falling short.
For generations, Jews were at the forefront of labor movements, fighting for fair wages and economic justice. Today, that spirit continues with groups like the Network of Jewish Human Service Agencies, which organized for months against the healthcare cuts embedded in HR 1. But the issue seemed to be missing or swept aside from the radar of the broader Jewish community.
Despite our people’s history being marked by our lack of access to assets, I sometimes feel like I’m inside an antisemitic cartoon when I jokingly remind people that yes, low-income Jews do exist and at high rates. I myself grew up in a household that at times relied on government assistance like SNAP and free school lunch. I know how it feels to sit in synagogue and wonder if anyone sees you, and your or your friends’ financial fears.
As a former case manager, CEO of a national hunger organization, and now Jewish poverty expert, I have learned that change does not happen alone. Our rabbis, our philanthropists, our institutions, and yes, our government partners must all widen the definition of Jewish security.
We recently marked Sukkot, a holiday that puts front and center how fragile security can be. We should remember that our ancestors never defined security by walls alone. They defined it by covenant—by the promise that no one would be left to wander alone. As philosopher Michael Waltzer reminds us, “wherever you are, there too is Egypt,” a place where someone is oppressed and burdened.
Waltzer reminds us that a better world is possible, and the only way to get there is by joining together.
When I walk through those metal detectors on Shabbat, I’m grateful. And I know that for many, security requires not just protection but stability. Jewish security means that every person in our community can live with healthcare, access to a thriving Jewish life, and someone to call when things get hard. That is the covenant we renew each time we care for one another.
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‘The church is asleep right now’: Ted Cruz calls on Christians to confront right-wing antisemitism
Sen. Ted Cruz used his keynote address at a major gathering for Christian supporters of Israel this week to warn of “a growing cancer” of antisemitism on the right, which he said church leaders are failing to address.
“I’m here to tell you, in the last six months, I have seen antisemitism rising on the right in a way I have never seen in my entire life,” Cruz said, speaking on Sunday at a megachurch in San Antonio, led by John Hagee, the founder of Christians United for Israel, which claims to have more than 10 million members.
He continued, “The work that CUFI does is desperately, desperately needed, but I’m here to tell you, the church is asleep right now.”
In the days around Cruz’s speech at Hagee’s 45th annual Night to Honor Israel, a cluster of conservative voices made similar appeals, arguing that antisemitism inside parts of the right can no longer be waved away as fringe. Essays in The Free Press and Tablet mapped how extremist figures and ideas have been normalized and the Jewish educational center and think tank Tikvah warned of a “clear faction” hostile to Israel and Judaism.
In The Free Press, conservative columnist Eli Lake published an essay titled “How Nick Fuentes Went Mainstream,” arguing that the far-right activist — long shunned for racist and antisemitic rhetoric — has lately been welcomed by a roster of popular podcasts and livestreams. In Lake’s telling, the “stigma” around Fuentes has “melted away,” an index of how the Overton window has shifted inside parts of the online right.
At Tablet, a first-person essay by a libertarian insider headlined “Hitler Is Back in Style,” traced what the author describes as a libertarian-to-alt-right pipeline that, over the past decade, normalized conspiratorial thinking about Jews and open flirtations with Hitler apologetics. The piece is both confessional and diagnostic, naming podcast ecosystems and ideological crosscurrents that, the author argues, have turned “antiwar” rhetoric into reflexive anti-Israel sentiment and a broader hostility to Jews.
Meanwhile, Tikvah, one of the most prominent right-wing groups in the Jewish world, noted in an email to supporters Thursday that it has tracked the same trend.
“Today, there is a clear faction of the right that is overtly hostile to Israel and to Judaism. And though small, it is no longer marginal or possible to ignore,” wrote Avi Snyder, a senior director at Tikvah.
The organization pointed to a body of essays it began publishing in 2023, warning that some on the right were reviving old suspicions about Jewish loyalty, casting the U.S.-Israel alliance as a trap, and disputing the moral superiority of the Allied fight in World War II.
In the background is the aftershock of Charlie Kirk’s assassination last month, which unleashed a torrent of conspiracies that quickly turned antisemitic in parts of the right’s online ecosystem. Fact-checkers documented a flood of false claims, while some influencers toyed with theories about Israeli or “Mossad” involvement — rhetoric with enough popular traction that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, felt compelled to issue a rebuttal. The swirl reinforced how fast fringe ideas migrate in today’s media sphere, even as prosecutors in Utah have charged a suspect and outlined a motive that has nothing to do with Israel.
In his speech, Cruz noted he has talked to Netanyahu about declining support for Israel on the right — and that the two men see the issue differently.
He recounted a recent conversation with the Israeli prime minister, saying that Netanyahu’s first instinct was to chalk much of it up to foreign amplification from places like Qatar and Iran — bots and paid misinformation networks.
Cruz pushed back: “I said, ‘Mr. Prime Minister, yes, but no. Yes, Qatar and Iran are clearly paying for it, and there are bots, and they are putting real money behind it, but I am telling you, this is real, it is organic, these are real human beings, and it is spreading.’”
Later in his address, Cruz highlighted the drift’s theological dimension. He warned of a resurgence of replacement theology, which he characterized as a “lie that the promises God made to Israel and the people of Israel are somehow no longer good, they are no longer valid.”
According to replacement theology, the Israelites were supplanted as God’s chosen people once the Christian church was founded.
Cruz didn’t blame anyone by name, but his comments come as figures with long records of inflammatory commentary toward Jews or Israel have continued to gain oxygen. Fuentes has rebounded from ostracism to high-visibility bookings; Tucker Carlson draws millions of viewers amplifying narratives that edge into Jew-baiting; and Candace Owens’ conspiratorial comments about Israel continue to pull audiences.
Together they form a feedback loop in which algorithmic reach and controversy reward edgier takes — and make it harder for party actors to draw lines.
Adding to the fray is last week’s Young Republicans leak, a Politico exposé of a Telegram chat where early-career GOP activists traded racist slurs, joked about gas chambers and praised Hitler. The episode prompted firings, the shutdown of state Young Republican chapters and bipartisan condemnation. But Vice President J.D. Vance downplayed the messages as immature “jokes” and urged critics to “grow up,” a stance that itself became part of the week’s debate over whether the right will police its own.
Soon after Kirk’s assassination, Rich Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a veteran of Republican politics, urged more policing on the right. In a post on X, he called on conservatives to stop booking Carlson, calling the former Fox News host’s posture toward Jews and Israel “a disease that is poisoning the Republican Party.”
He added, “It needs to be met with a decision by those we call ‘leaders’ to stop platforming him (and those who echo such vile sentiments).”
More than a month later, the most important right-wing leader in the country, Donald Trump, has yet to weigh in.
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Netflix drops Season 2 of ‘Nobody Wants This,’ returning Rabbi Noah and interfaith dilemmas to TV screens
When the first season of the surprise hit “Nobody Wants This” ended last year, viewers were left with a cliffhanger about the unlikely couple at the center of the story: Would Joanne convert to be with Rabbi Noah? Would they be together at all?
Now, the second season has dropped, bringing the immediate revelation in the first episode that, while their relationship has survived, no decision has been made. Thus begins another 10-episode season showcasing the travails of an interfaith Los Angeles couple and their families, portraying culture clashes and synagogue politics as the backdrop to both universal relationship road bumps and steamy romance.
In addition to Adam Brody as Rabbi Noah Roklov, two other Jewish actors step in to play rabbis — Alex Karpovsky as another Rabbi Noah and Seth Rogen as Rabbi Neil, the leader of a congregation more progressive than the original Rabbi Noah’s Temple Chai.
Over the course of the season, the show depicts a Purim celebration, a Shabbat dinner, a baby-naming ceremony, fraught dilemmas over the inclusion of non-Jewish partners in Jewish communities and, yes, a decision to convert to Judaism. (Our colleagues at Kveller have compiled an episode-by-episode analysis and opened a group-chat on Substack.)
The first season drew plaudits for casually celebrating Jewish life while also eliciting criticism for its characterization of Jewish women and surface-level depictions of Jewish practice. Those continue into Season 2, according to Evelyn Frick at Hey Alma, who chronicles a litany of shortcomings in an essay raising questions about whether the show has a positive view of Judaism at all.
A Los Angeles rabbi who served as a consultant on the first season and told us at the time that he had worked to ensure the Jewish content was “done with authenticity and respect” is not listed in the credits this time around.
Still, the show has generated a staunch fan base whose members are treating the launch of the new season with some of the fervor surrounding a Taylor Swift album drop. A splashy event drew hundreds to the 92nd Street Y in New York City on Wednesday to screen the first episode together, and a block party complete with photo opportunities and exclusive merchandise is planned for Saturday in Los Angeles.
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