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From ‘how to’ to ‘why bother?’: Michael Strassfeld writes a new guide to being Jewish
(JTA) — “What the son wishes to forget the grandson wishes to remember.” That’s known as Hansen’s Law, named for the historian Marcus Lee Hansen, who observed that while the children of immigrants tend to run away from their ethnicity in order to join the mainstream, the third generation often wants to learn the “old ways” of their grandparents.
In 1973, “The Jewish Catalog” turned Hansen’s Law into a “do-it-yourself kit” for young Jews who wanted to practice the traditions of their grandparents but weren’t exactly sure how. Imagine “The Joy of Cooking,” but instead of recipes the guide to Jewish living had friendly instructions for hosting Shabbat, building a sukkah and taking part in Jewish rituals from birth to death. Co-edited by Michael Strassfeld, Sharon Strassfeld and the late Richard Siegel, it went on to sell 300,000 copies and remains in print today.
Fifty years later, Rabbi Michael Strassfeld has written a new book that he calls a “bookend” to “The Jewish Catalog.” If the first book is a Jewish “how to,” the latest asks, he says, “why bother?” “Judaism Disrupted: A Spiritual Manifesto for the 21st Century” asserts that an open society and egalitarian ethics leave most Jews skeptical of the rituals and beliefs of Jewish tradition. In the face of this resistance, he argues that the purpose of Judaism is not obedience to Torah and its rituals for their own sake or mere “continuity,” but to “encourage and remind us to strive to live a life of compassion, loving relationships, and devotion to our ideals.”
Strassfeld, 73, grew up in an Orthodox home in Boston and got his master’s degree in Jewish studies at Brandeis University. Coming to doubt the “faith claims” of Orthodoxy, he became a regular at nearby Havurat Shalom, an “intentional community” that pioneered the havurah movement’s liberal, hands-on approach to traditional practice. He earned rabbinical ordination from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College when he was 41 and went on to serve as the rabbi of Congregation Ansche Chesed on the Upper West Side and later the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, the Manhattan flagship of Reconstructionist Judaism.
“To be disrupted is to experience a break with the past and simultaneously reconnect in a new way to that past,” writes Strassfeld, who retired from the pulpit in 2015. This week, we spoke about why people might find Jewish ritual empty, how he thinks Jewish practices can enrich their lives and how Passover — which begins Wednesday night — could be the key to unlocking the central idea of Judaism.
Our conversation was edited for length and clarity.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: I wanted to start with the 50th anniversary of the “Jewish Catalog.” What connects the new book with the work you did back then on the “Catalog,” which was a do-it-yourself guide for Jews who were trying to reclaim the stuff they either did or didn’t learn in Hebrew school?
Michael Strassfeld: I see them as bookends. Basically, I keep on writing the same book over and over again. [Laughs] Except no, I’m different and the world is different. I’m always trying to make Judaism accessible to people. In the “Catalog” I was providing the resources on how to live a Jewish life when the resources weren’t easily accessible.
The new book is less about “how to” than “why bother?” That’s the challenge. I think a lot of people take pride in being Jewish, but it’s a small part of their identity because it doesn’t feel relevant. I want to say to people like that that Judaism is about living a life with meaning and purpose. It’s not about doing what I call the “Jewishly Jewish” things, like keeping kosher and going to synagogue. Judaism is wisdom and practices to live life with meaning and purpose. The purpose of Judaism isn’t to be a good Jew, despite all the surveys that give you 10 points for, you know, lighting Shabbat candles. It’s about being a good person.
So that brings up your relationship to the commandments and mitzvot, the traditional acts and behaviors that an Orthodox Jew or a committed Conservative Jew feels commanded to do, from prayer to keeping kosher to observing the Sabbath and the holidays. They might argue that doing these things is what makes you Jewish, but you’re arguing something different. If someone doesn’t feel bound by these obligations, why do them at all?
I don’t have the faith or beliefs that underlie such an attitude [of obligation]. Halacha, or Jewish law, is not in reality law. It’s really unlike American law where you know that if you’re violating it, you could be prosecuted. What I’m trying to do in the book is reframe rituals as an awareness practice, that is, bringing awareness to various aspects of our lives. So it could be paying attention to food, or cultivating attitudes of gratitude, or generosity, or satisfaction. My broad understanding of the festival cycle, for example, is that you can focus on those attitudes all year long, but the festivals provide a period of time once in the year to really focus on, in the case of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, for example, saying sorry and repairing relationships.
In “Judaism Disrupted: A Spiritual Manifesto for the 21st Century,” Michael Strassfeld argues that the challenge of each generation’s Jews is to create the Judaism that is needed in their time. (Ben Yehuda Press)
Passover is coming. Probably no holiday asks its practitioners to do so much stuff in preparation, from cleaning the house of every trace of unleavened food to hosting, in many homes, two different catered seminars on Jewish history. Describe how Passover cultivates awareness, especially of the idea of freedom, which plays an important part thematically in your boo
The Sefat Emet [a 19th-century Hasidic master] says Torah is all about one thing: freedom. But there’s a variety of obstacles in the way. There are temptations. There’s the inner issues that you struggle with, and the bad things that are out of your control. The Sefat Emet says the 613 commandments are 613 etzot, or advice, that teach us how to live a life of freedom. The focus of Passover is trying to free yourself from the chains of the things that hold you back from being the person that you could be, not getting caught up in materiality or envy, free from unnecessary anxieties — all these things that distract us or keep us from being who we could be.
The Passover seder is one of the great rituals of Judaism. We’re trying to do a very ambitious thing by saying, not, like, “let’s remember when our ancestors were freed from Egypt,” but rather that we were slaves in Egypt and we went free. And at the seder we actually ingest that. We experience the bitterness by eating maror, the bitter herb. We experience the freedom by drinking wine. We don’t want it just to be an intellectual exercise.
Unfortunately the seder has become rote. But Passover is about this huge theme of freedom that is central to Judaism.
I think some people bristle against ritual because they find it empty. But you’re saying there’s another way to approach rituals which is to think of them as tools or instruments that can help you focus on core principles — you actually list 11 — which include finding holiness everywhere, caring for the planet and engaging in social justice, to name a few. But that invites the criticism, which I think was also leveled at the “Catalog,” that Judaism shouldn’t be instrumental, because if you treat it as a means to an end that’s self-serving and individualistic.
Certainly rituals are tools, but tools in the best sense of the word. They help us pay attention to things in our lives and things in the world that need repair. And people use them not to get ahead in the world, but because they want to be a somewhat better person. I talk a lot these days about having a brief morning practice, and in the book I write about the mezuzah. For most Jews it’s become wallpaper, but what if you take the moment that you leave in the morning, and there’s a transition from home to the outside and to work perhaps, and take a moment at the doorpost to spiritually frame your day? What are the major principles that you want to keep in your mind when you know you’re gonna be stuck in traffic or a difficult meeting?
And a lot of traditional rituals are instrumental. Saying a blessing before you eat is a gratitude practice.
But why do I need a particular Jewish ritual or practice to help me feel gratitude or order my day? Aren’t there other traditions I can use to accomplish the same things?
Anybody who is a pluralist, which I am, knows that the Jewish way is not the only way. If I grew up in India or Indonesia and my parents were locals I probably wouldn’t be a rabbi and writing these books.
But a partial answer to your question is that Judaism is one of the oldest wisdom traditions in the world, and that there has been a 3,000-year conversation by the Jewish people about what it means to live in this tradition and to live in the world. And so I think there’s a lot of wisdom there.
So much in Jewish tradition says boundaries are good, and that it’s important to draw distinctions between what’s Jewish behavior and what’s not Jewish behavior, between the holy and the mundane, and that making those distinctions is a value in itself. But you argue strongly in an early chapter that that kind of binary thinking is not Judaism as you see it.
Underlying the book is the notion that Rabbinic Judaism carried the Jewish people for 2,000 years or so. But we’re living in a very different context, and the binaries, the dualities — too often they lead to hierarchy, so that, for example, men matter more than women in Jewish life. And we’ve tried to change that. We are living in an open society where we want to be more inclusive, not less inclusive. We don’t want to live in ghettos. Now, the ultra-Orthodox say, “No, we realize the danger of trying to live like that. We don’t think there’s anything of value in that modern world. And it’s all to be rejected.” And it would be foolish not to admit that in this very open world the Jews, as a minority, could kind of disappear. But I think that Judaism has so much value and wisdom and practices to offer to people that Judaism will continue to be part of the fabric of this world — the way, for example, we have given Shabbat as a concept to the world.
You know, in the first 11 chapters of the Torah, there are no Jews. So clearly, Jews and Judaism are not essential for the world to exist. And that’s a good, humbling message.
OK, but one could argue that while Jews aren’t necessary for the world to exist, Judaism is necessary for Jews to exist. And you write in your book, “If the Jewish people is to be a people, we need to have a commonly held tradition.” I think the pushback to the kind of openness and permeability you describe is that Jews can be so open and so permeable that they just fall through the holes.
It certainly is a possibility. And it’s also a possibility that the only Jews who will be around will be ultra-Orthodox Jews.
But if Judaism can only survive by being separatist, then I question whether it’s really worthwhile. That becomes a distorted vision of Judaism, and withdrawing is not what it’s meant to be. I think we’re meant to be in the world.
Your book is called “Judaism Disrupted.” What is disruptive about the Judaism that you’re proposing?
I meant it in two ways. First, Judaism is being disrupted by this very different world we’re living in. The contents of the ocean we swim in is very different than in the Middle Ages. But I’m also using it to say that Judaism is meant to disrupt our lives in a positive way, which is to say, “Wake up, pay attention.” You are here to live a life of meaning and purpose, and to continue as co-creators with God of the universe. You’re here to make the world better, to be kind and compassionate to people, to work on yourself. In my mind it is a shofar, “Wake up, sleepers, from your sleep!” “Judaism Disrupted” says you have to pay attention to issues like food, and justice, and teshuva [repentance].
You were ordained as a Reconstructionist rabbi. Do you think your book falls neatly into any of our current denominational categories?
[Reconstructionist founder] Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan’s notion of Judaism as an evolving religious civilization is the one that I feel closest to. But I feel that the denominational structure isn’t particularly useful anymore. There’s basically two categories, Orthodox and the various kinds of liberal Judaism, within a spectrum. The modern world is so fundamentally different in its relationship to Jews and Judaism that what we’re seeing is a variety of attempts to figure out how to respond. And that will then become the Judaism for the next millennium. It’s time for a lot of experimentation. I think that’s required and out of that will come a new “Minhag America,” to use Isaac Mayer Wise’s phrase for the emerging custom of American Jews [Wise was a Reform rabbi in the late 19th century]. And we don’t need to have everybody doing it one way. As long as people feel committed to Judaism, the Jewish tradition, even if they’re doing it very differently than the Jews of the past, they will be writing themselves into the conversation.
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Anti-Israel Conservative Activist Ousted From White House Religious Liberty Commission Over Behavior
Carrie Prejean Boller speaks during a White House Religious Liberty Commission hearing on Feb. 9, 2026. Photo: Screenshot
Carrie Prejean Boller, a conservative activist appointed to the White House Religious Liberty Commission during the Trump administration, was removed from the panel following outrage over her repeated downplaying of antisemitism and defense of antisemitic podcaster Candace Owens.
Dan Patrick, lieutenant governor of Texas and chair of the US President Donald Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, announced the news on the social media platform X on Wednesday.
“Carrie Prejean Boller has been removed from President Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission. No member of the commission has the right to hijack a hearing for their own personal and political agenda on any issue,” Patrick posted. “This is clearly, without question, what happened Monday in our hearing on antisemitism in America. This was my decision.”
The controversy arose during a public hearing intended to address rising antisemitism in the United States. Instead of focusing on the growing threats facing Jewish communities, Prejean Boller repeatedly pressed witnesses on Israel and Zionism, questioning whether opposition to the Jewish state should be considered antisemitic.
Prejean Boller, a conservative activist and former Miss California, repeatedly pressed witnesses about Israel’s actions in Gaza and religious leaders on their views of Zionism, drawing audible boos from the audience and confusion from her colleagues. At one point she asked a Jewish activist if he would condemn Israel’s military response to Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, despite the hearing’s official focus on domestic antisemitism. Prejean Boller also donned a Palestinian flag pin on the lapel of her suit, telegraphing her support for the anti-Israel ideological cause.
During the hearing, she also accused Rabbi Ari Berman, president of Yeshiva University, of Islamophobia after he declared that anti-Zionism — the belief that Israel does not have a right to exist —is an antisemitic ideology. Berman argued that attempts to delegitimize the existence of the world’s sole Jewish state, while showing ambivalence toward the existence of dozens of Muslim states, indicates anti-Jewish sentiment.
Members of the commission expressed visible surprise at Prejean Boller’s line of questioning and repeated downplaying of antisemitism. Jewish student activist Shabbos Kestenbaum took aim at Prejean Boller after she asserted that the young activist had conflated antisemitism with harboring anti-Israel sentiment.
“She decided that this should be a debate on Israel’s conduct in Gaza, which I’m not entirely sure how that affects American students being discriminated against,” Kestenbaum said, “given that there are hundreds of millions of Catholics, including some who are on this commission, speaking at this commission today, who would vehemently disagree with such a grandiose assertion.”
Additionally, Prejean Boller issued an impassioned defense of pundits Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, asserting that neither are antisemitic.
Owens, one of the country’s most popular podcasters, has spent the past two years spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories on her platform. She has called Jews “pedophilic,” argued that they persecute and murder Christians, minimized the Holocaust, and asserted that they are responsible for the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Carlson, meanwhile, has platformed Holocaust deniers on his show and falsely accused Israel of wantonly killing Palestinian children. Last year, he appeared to blame the Jewish people for the deaths of both Jesus and conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Following Prejean Boller’s dismissal, Owens took to X to sing her praises and accused Israelis of being “occult Baal worshipers.”
“Zionists are naturally hostile to Catholics because we refuse to bend the knee to revisionist history and support the mass slaughter and rape of innocent children for occult Baal worshipers,” Owens posted.
A report from the Wall Street Journal later revealed that Sameerah Munshi, a Muslim community advocate and member of the commission’s advisory board, had been recording Prejean Boller during her performance. The outlet also said that she and Prejean Boller appeared to be texting during the hearing, implying that the firebrand was fed talking points.
Later that day, Prejean Boller posted a photo of herself smiling next to Munshi at an event hosted by Palestine House of Freedom, an NGO founded by anti-Israel activist Miko Peled. The organization has drawn criticism over its alleged ties to extremist groups. The organization hosted a fundraiser for Birzeit University, whose student council is reportedly dominated by the Hamas-affiliated Al-Wafaa bloc.
Multiple commissioners and Jewish advocacy groups expressed alarm over Prejean Boller’s behavior, accusing her of hijacking a hearing meant to confront domestic antisemitism and using it as a platform to direct criticism toward Israel. They argued her conduct reflected a broader trend of using anti-Zionism as a cover for antisemitic rhetoric.
The backlash was swift, with religious liberty advocates and Jewish leaders calling Prejean Boller’s stated beliefs incompatible with the commission’s purpose.
Still, Prejean Boller remained defiant.
“I will continue to stand against Zionist supremacy in America. I’m a proud Catholic. I, in no way will be forced to embrace Zionism as a fulfillment of biblical prophesy [sic]. I am a free American. Not a slave to a foreign nation,” she posted on X on Tuesday.
However, the activist faced a number of denunciations from fellow Catholics who accused her of misrepresenting their faith to launch antisemitic attacks against Israel.
“From one Catholic to another: nobody is upset with you for your Catholic faith,” wrote Tim Chapman, president of the conservative think tank Americans Advancing Freedom. “Catholics can and should support Israel.”
“If Zionist means I think Israel has a right to exist, then I’m a Zionist, and so is the Catholic Church,” added conservative activist Lila Rose.
Following the viral incident, Prejean Boller gained over 50,000 new followers on X and has continued to attack Israel and Zionists, those who believe the Jewish state has a right to exist.
“I will never bend the knee to the state of Israel. Ever. I am more determined than ever to speak plainly about political Zionism and the lies we’ve been sold to justify endless war, dead children, and blank checks,” she wrote on X.
The commission was established by Trump to examine religious freedom issues and was intended to focus on concrete challenges facing Jewish communities, including bias and harassment. It is supposed to produce a report for Trump on religious liberty later this year.
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This Jewish Olympian prays with her mom before every race
Kamryn Lute’s Olympic ritual doesn’t start on the ice. It begins with a text to her mom: “Dear God,” she types. “Please help me do my best.”
Kamryn, 21, is the only member of Team USA’s speedskating squad to have had a bat mitzvah – or a beloved pug who shared her Hebrew name, Elisheva.
The pre-race prayer with her mother is the final buffer against the chaos of what’s to come. The words themselves are a contract with uncertainty. “My parents instilled in me that all that we can do is our best,” Kamryn said. “I just repeat that in my head. And then it’s out of my hands.”
As she bides her time in the athletes’ village — she’ll be making her Olympic debut on Saturday — Kamryn scrolls through messages from her mom and newsletters from her synagogue back home, grounding herself in faith and family.
Routine is everything. She wakes early and eats in the cafeteria with competitors from around the world. “We’re training every day,” she said via Zoom on Wednesday, sitting on the edge of her twin bed in the dorm-style room she shares with a teammate.
Born at Manhattan’s Mount Sinai Hospital and named at Central Synagogue, Kamryn spent her early years shuttling between New York and Washington, D.C., as her parents followed careers in government and diplomacy. Her dad, Douglas, worked in both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, and her mom, Jane, worked at the United Nations.
Her journey to Milan began in her living room. In the winter of 2010, short track speedskating phenom Apolo Ohno carved impossible lines across the TV during the Vancouver Olympics. Kamryn, then five, pointed at the screen. “I want to do that,” she announced ambitiously to her parents. They assumed her interest would fade. It didn’t.
Kamryn, who is 5′ 10”, has not stopped since. She won her first medal on a broken ankle at the age of 7. By eight, she was a national champion. She has set 10 national records.
At 17, she nearly made it onto the team for the Winter Olympics in Beijing. In Milan, Kamryn is competing in two events: the 3000-meter relay and, individually, in the 1500 meters.
Short track is a study in contradictions: grace pitched against danger, speeds nudging 35 miles an hour, each lap a negotiation with physics and fate. Kamryn has trained for 16 years to make the improbable look inevitable — a victory, if it comes, measured in centimeters and seconds.
“Actually,” she admitted, “I’m scared of heights, so I’m just happy we’re on the ground, compared to skiing and ski jumping.”
Kamryn’s pursuit of speedskating took her west, where she trains with the U.S. team. She’s a junior at the University of Utah, majoring in economics with a minor in French. When not training or competing, she’s focused on coursework and her long-term goal: to become a lawyer, a path inspired in part by her mother’s career in public service. “I’ve known for 10 years now that I want to go to law school,” Kamryn said.
The importance of faith
Kamryn is the youngest of four girls, and part of a blended, interfaith family. The family’s Jewishness is foundational: lighting Shabbat candles, memberships at both Central Synagogue in Manhattan, which is Reform, and the Conservative congregation Etz Hayim in Arlington, Virginia, just outside D.C.
“Being Jewish is a big part of our identity,” Jane Lute, Kamryn’s mother, said in an interview with the Forward. “It’s grounding. I tell my girls, courage is contagious in a crowd. You were born to a crowd. Never fear doing the right thing.”
Before the games began in Milan, Jane told Kamryn to recite the Shehecheyanu — the blessing for new experiences — during the opening ceremony, which Kamryn did. “I listen to my mom,” she said with a laugh.
On race day, Kamryn’s rituals are methodical: 90 minutes of warm-up, bike and stretches, hip hop and rap in her ears. “I always get nervous when I race,” she said. “But once the race starts, everything else disappears.”
Jane’s expectations are as precise as her daughter’s routines. “It’s impossible for you to disappoint anyone in your life at this stage,” she told her daughter. “Don’t put that pressure on yourself. Do pay attention to your character. Pay attention to how you conduct yourself.”
Whether the Olympics end in a blur of medals or missed turns, the duo will likely send the same post-race text they always do.
“God is good,” Jane usually types.
Kamryn’s reply is always the same: “Baruch Hashem.”
The post This Jewish Olympian prays with her mom before every race appeared first on The Forward.
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New York Democrat Comptroller Candidate’s Plan to Divest From Israel Is Imprudent, Republican Opponent Says
Joseph Hernandez, Republican candidate for New York State Comptroller, speaking with voters. Photo: Hernandez campaign
The plan of a Democratic candidate for New York comptroller to divest the state of its holdings in Israel bonds violates the fiduciary duties of an office which oversees the management of hundreds of billions of dollars in pension funds and other assets, his Republican opponent, Joseph Hernandez, told The Algemeiner during an exclusive interview on Monday.
Hernandez, a Cuban refugee whose family fled the Castro regime, explained that the proposal, promised by former Kansas state Rep. Raj Goyle (who moved to New York after a failed bid for US Congress in 2010), would amount to an endorsement of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel while alienating a country widely regarded as arguably the most reliable US ally.
Israel bonds, he added, are one of the safest assets a government could own. He has promised to invest $1 billion in them if he is elected.
“From a purely financial perspective, these are good investments. You would put your own money in this for sure, and you shouldn’t apply politics to the equation,” he said. “Imagine if we stopped investing the bonds of other foreign countries or vice versa because of disagreements over policy. That’s just bad decision making.”
“The economic rationale for investing in Israeli bonds is impeccable,” Hernandez continued. “Israel has an exploding technology sector producing giant leaps in artificial intelligence and the next generation of health care and biotech. We should be partnering with them in these areas, beyond the bonds. I think the relationship, from an investment perspective, should be broader. As the fiduciary and ultimately as the sole trustee of the New York State pension fund, I will seek ways not only to increase investment on the bonds side but also to collaborate on bringing the next generation of technologies to New York and promote a new era of job growth in the state.”
In New York City specifically, records show that Israel bonds, historically yielding approximately 5 percent annually, have outperformed many alternatives.
As for the state overall, Israeli firms pour billions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs into the local economy, and business experts have warned that a push for divestment could lead Israeli-associated and Jewish-owned companies to leave.
A study released by the United States-Israel Business Alliance in October revealed that, based on 2024 data, 590 Israeli-founded companies directly created 27,471 jobs in New York City that year and indirectly created over 50,000 jobs when accounting for related factors, such as buying and shipping local products.
These firms generated $8.1 billion in total earnings, adding an estimated $12.4 billion in value to the city’s economy and $17.9 billion in total gross economic output.
As for the entire state, the report, titled the “2025 New York – Israel Economic Impact Report,” found that 648 Israeli-founded companies generated $8.6 billion in total earnings and $19.5 billion in gross economic output, contributing a striking $13.3 billion in added value to the economy. These businesses also directly created 28,524 jobs and a total of 57,145 when accounting for related factors.
From financial tech leaders like Fireblocks to cybersecurity powerhouse Wiz, Israeli entrepreneurs have become indispensable to the innovation ecosystem. The number of Israeli-founded “unicorns,” privately held companies with a valuation of at least $1 billion, operating in New York City has quadrupled since 2019, increasing from five to 20.
However, anti-Israel activists in the US have been pushing for state and local governments, in addition to businesses, universities, and various cultural forums to divest all assets from Israel-linked entities in accordance with the BDS movement.
The BDS movement seeks to isolate Israel on the international stage as the first step toward its elimination. Leaders of the movement have repeatedly stated their goal is to destroy the world’s only Jewish state.
Goyle’s plan would enact the divestment component of BDS by aiming to limit Israel’s capacity to issue bonds for the purpose of borrowing money, a core function of government which raises capital for expenditures such as roads and bridges while contributing to economic health, market stabilization, and a high credit rating.
The New York Post reported last month that Goyle wants to fully divest $338 million in foreign assets, including Israel bonds, from New York’s retirement fund.
“I’m here to tell you that when I am comptroller, we will not renew the foreign bond portfolio of the state comptroller’s office and that includes Israel bonds,” Goyle told a gathering of supporters of the left-wing Working Families Party. “We will not send a blank check for [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu’s war crimes in Gaza.”
The state comptroller’s office manages pensions for state and municipal workers and runs the Common Retirement Fund, one of the largest pension funds in the country with a $291 billion investment portfolio. It currently holds about $337.5 million in Israel bonds.
“I live in New York, the largest Jewish population outside of Israel. I see what this community contributes to America and to our society,” he said. “The relationship that we have is unbreakable and it is one we should continue to invest in both socially, politically, and financially.”
Across the political spectrum, Israel bonds are widely considered wise investments.
“They’re stable, they’re guaranteed, they’ve never had a problem, and it’s a good investment,” state Assemblyman David Weprin, a Democrat and former chair of the New York City Council Finance Committee, told the Post.
Goyle is not the only New York Democrat advocating a rupture in the state’s financial relationship with Israel. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who entered office last month, has been an outspoken supporter of the BDS movement.
Mamdani, a far-left democratic socialist who has made anti-Israel activism a cornerstone of his political career, has repeatedly accused Israel of “apartheid” and refused to recognize its right to exist as a Jewish state.
Such positions have raised alarm bells among not only New York’s Jewish community but also Israeli business owners and investors, who fear a hostile climate under Mamdani’s leadership.
His election came after former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander refused last year to renew some Israel bonds in the city’s pension fund, which is a separate entity. The office of then-Mayor Eric Adams accused Lander of pushing a political agenda by moving to withdraw millions of dollars in city pension funds from bonds issued by the Jewish state.
On Monday, Hernandez pledged to be beholden to New York’s taxpayers and not fringe ideological groups.
“There’s a reason that this is an independent elected role,” he concluded. “It’s supposed to be a role that doesn’t take political filters or use politics for decision making. This is about fiduciary duty and what it is in the best interest of the taxpayers, and I intend to execute to that effect.”
Both Goyle and Hernandez are vying to unseat incumbent state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, a Democrat.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.