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Israel at 75: How Israel’s political crisis took center stage at a major American Jewish conference
KIBBUTZ MAAGAN MICHAEL, Israel (JTA) — About a dozen Jewish leaders from North America and beyond clustered at the edges of a courtyard on this kibbutz by Israel’s northern coastline, standing silent as a two-minute siren rang out in memory of the country’s fallen.
Afterward, young Jews from around the world, some of whom will soon enter the Israeli military, read memorial passages and led the crowd in the singing of Israel’s national anthem. The scene, emblematic of Diaspora support for Israel, delivered the kind of feeling that the Jewish Federations of North America hoped to evoke when it held its marquee conference in Israel this week, and timed it for the country’s Memorial Day and 75th birthday.
It was also a stark contrast from the atmosphere at the conference a day earlier where — even as Jewish leaders emphasized unity in the face of adversity — it was hard to avoid the political strife over the Israeli government’s effort to significantly limit the Supreme Court’s power. A raucous session in the morning was filled with screaming, and other panels touched on hot-button issues such as Israel’s treatment of non-Orthodox Jews as well as human rights groups.
“We’re also living at a time of so many crises and so much painful brokenness,” Rabbi Marc Baker, CEO of the Boston area’s Jewish federation, said in a short address on Monday afternoon to the conference’s 2,000 attendees, while discussing the importance of Jewish learning. “It can feel like things are falling apart, like at best, as leaders, we’re just trying to hold things together.”
The drama did not exactly surprise organizers of the gathering, called the General Assembly, or GA, who had expected protesters to show up and even encouraged their cause. But it pointed to the challenge facing the Jewish Federations, which had hoped to put on a traditionally exuberant celebration of Israel despite the conflict rocking its streets.
Those traditional commemorations and festivities did happen, and sessions covered a range of issues, from racial diversity to philanthropy in Israel. But they were mixed in with anguish over the state of Israeli society, which some attendees and panelists portrayed in urgent terms.
“For the first time, at Israel’s 75th birthday, a government is trying to fundamentally alter the definition of a Jewish state,” Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute think tank, said at the tumultuous Monday morning panel, referring to efforts to restrict immigration to Israel and other proposals.
He added, “If this cluster of changes, the coalition agreements, would be implemented, I’m not sure that in the 80th year of our national birthday, the GA will decide again to conduct its event here.”
The departure from business-as-usual was evident from the get-go, when hundreds of protesters came to the gates of the conference to protest a planned speech on Sunday night by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who canceled in the face of the demonstrations. Israeli President Isaac Herzog did speak that night.
Julie Platt, the Jewish Federations’ board president, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that she found out about the cancellation earlier on Sunday. Netanyahu’s office told the staff of the Jewish Federations that day of the cancellation, and the news became public shortly afterward. Netanyahu did not reach out personally to Platt or to Eric Fingerhut, the Jewish Federations’ CEO, to let them know he would not be coming.
“We were preparing for weeks and months for the opportunity to have here the duly elected prime minister,” Platt said on Monday. “We were disappointed that he wasn’t part of our celebration.”
Tensions peaked on Monday morning during a session where anti-government protesters repeatedly interrupted far-right lawmaker Simcha Rothman with shouts and chants, and in which Rothman and Plesner verbally sparred onstage. Multiple protesters were removed by security personnel, and the panel took an unplanned five-minute break to cool tempers.
“They’re our brothers, they support us,” said Erez Elach, who protested Rothman at the event, regarding Diaspora Jews. Elach is a member of Brothers and Sisters in Arms, a group made up of military reservists opposed to the judicial overhaul.
Elach said he was protesting in order to honor Diaspora Jews who were killed while serving in the Israel Defense Forces. “We lost friends who served with us, who came from those same places,” he said.
Fingerhut told JTA that the protests of Rothman were “a taste of what’s happening in Israel today,” though he added, “I don’t think anyone benefits from that kind of disruption.”
“As the GA grew closer, we knew that the judicial reform issues and the divisions it’s creating in Israel would necessarily be a significant topic,” he said. “By time we were finalizing our plans, we expected it to be a major issue, and it was.”
But he said that he still felt the conference conveyed the importance of celebrating Israel and its ties to global Jewry. “On Sunday night and Monday, we focused on Israel’s history and our contribution to that history. That was not overshadowed,” he said. The battle over the judicial overhaul, he said, “added an agenda item, but it didn’t detract in any way.”
Former Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid speaks at the Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly in Tel Aviv on April 24, 2023. (Courtesy of JFNA/Amnon Gutman)
Yizhar Hess, the vice chair of the World Zionist Organization, also said on Monday that things were going well — because of the arguments, not despite them. Hess pointed to the three large gatherings of establishment Jewish groups — the General Assembly, the Jewish Agency for Israel Board of Governors’ meeting and the World Zionist Congress — each of which saw fierce debates or disruption stemming from the judicial overhaul fight.
“This week has been dramatically successful particularly because it’s been so turbulent,” Hess said directly after the session with Rothman. “Zionism and the state of Israel are a subject that stirs up the Jewish people and is at the heart of the argument. That’s a good thing. … Zionism is more relevant than ever, particularly because Jews are fighting over its character.”
Bucking its usual practice of not commenting on internal Israeli politics, the Jewish Federations has made its position on the overhaul relatively clear. The group issued a statement objecting to one of the overhaul’s provisions, praised a decision to pause the legislation, said it was “awed” by the anti-overhaul protesters and organized a “fly-in” earlier this year, in which federation leaders traveled to Israel to share their concerns about the effort with Israeli officials.
Deborah Minkoff, an executive board member at the Madison, Wisconsin, Jewish federation, participated in the fly-in and said she had lobbied to exclude all politicians from the General Assembly stage. She attended sessions where anti-overhaul activists spoke and felt that being in Israel for the conference gave her an opportunity to stand with the protesters.
“I think it’s going to be easier to sell Israel to our community because of this fight for democracy,” she said. “As we articulate what it means to be a free, equitable, democratic society, I think it resonates with the community who has been critical of Israel in the past.”
Attendees gave a warm reception to Yair Lapid, the leader of the parliamentary opposition, whose easy manner suggested that he felt the crowd would be receptive to his words. “I’m happy to be here, unlike some others,” he said to laughter from the audience.
“Don’t give up on us,” Lapid told the crowd. “I know how many people here feel about this current government. I know it doesn’t represent your values. It doesn’t represent mine either. But this government isn’t all of Israel… Today, maybe more than ever, we need you to rally around us.”
But not everyone at the conference was keen to protest. Beto Guzman, a Jewish professional who came to the conference from Helsinki, said the Finnish Jewish community tends not to protest Israeli policies because, given its small size, its involved members value having a positive relationship with Israeli emissaries in the country and do not want to blame them for the government’s policies. He also objected to protesters disrupting conferences, though he said the issues at the heart of the debate should be discussed.
“In Helsinki we don’t really have any protests or anything like this, because the community is very small and everybody has their own relationship with Israel,” he said. “For us that connection is very different. We really like the people from the Jewish Agency, their emissaries, and the embassy, they are very nice to us. So for us to put what is going on in the government on them would be unfair.”
Sandi Seigel, the president of Naamat Canada, a branch of a global Jewish women’s rights organization, said she was troubled by raucous debate she saw at the World Zionist Congress, which had taken place at the end of the previous week. She particularly worries that young delegates to the congress, one of whom she recalled seeing crying, would leave disheartened by the fighting.
“It’s almost like people feel it’s an existential threat for Israel, and so you’re passionate,” she said. “But there used to be an ability to have healthy debate and say, ‘OK, we’re not going to agree on this, OK, but I respect your right to have your opinion. And I think some of that is gone.”
At the same time, Seigel does not feel that the General Assembly was too focused on the debate over the judicial overhaul, which she framed in existential terms.
“If you have something, and you don’t know, if this doesn’t get resolved, [whether] Israel will be Israel anymore, or it won’t be the Israel that I can live in — there are a lot of things to talk about, but if you don’t deal with that, you can’t talk about anything else,” she said. “Because there’s nothing left to talk about.”
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The post Israel at 75: How Israel’s political crisis took center stage at a major American Jewish conference appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Prominent NYC rabbi urges congregants to vote against Zohran Mamdani in Shabbat sermon
(JTA) — This piece first ran as part of The Countdown, JTA’s daily newsletter rounding up all the developments in the New York City mayor’s race. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. There are 15 days to the election.
🗣 Rabbis speak out
- Two leading New York rabbis are using their pulpits to condemn Zohran Mamdani as he holds onto a commanding lead in the last weeks of the race.
- Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, who heads the Conservative Park Avenue Synagogue on the Upper East Side, decried the frontrunner in a speech to his congregation on Shabbat. “I believe Zohran Mamdani poses a danger to the security of the New York Jewish community,” he said, citing Mamdani’s views of Israel and Zionism.
- Cosgrove also urged his congregants to convince their Jewish friends and family to vote against Mamdani. He said Jewish New Yorkers should “prioritize their Jewish selves” by voting based on their connection to Israel, rather than local issues such as affordability.
- “As Jews, ahavat Israel — love of Israel — does take precedence over other loves,” said Cosgrove.
- Reform Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, who leads the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue on the Upper West Side, addressed Mamdani in his own video that was shared with his congregation days earlier.
- Hirsch said Mamdani’s “ideological commitments” against Israel served to “delegitimize the Jewish community and encourage and exacerbate hostility towards Judaism and Jews.” He told Mamdani, “I urge you to reconsider your long-held views of Israel’s right to exist.”
- Hirsch also said, “Most Jews are deeply offended by your ongoing accusations of Israeli genocide.” Four in 10 American Jews said they believed Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, according to a Washington Post poll conducted in early September.
- A Fox News survey last week found that Jews were closely split between Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo, who is polling a distant second in the race.
- Other New York rabbis have been plagued by the question of whether to endorse in this election, since the IRS reversed a decades-long policy that barred endorsements from the pulpit. Hirsch previously told our reporter Grace Gilson that he was alarmed by Mamdani but would not make an endorsement, warning fellow clergy that “it diminishes us if we are perceived as being in a partisan camp.”
📣 Sliwa called on to quit
- Curtis Sliwa faced calls to quit the race during a meeting at Fifth Avenue Synagogue on Sunday, where our reporter Joseph Strauss saw attendees pleading with the Republican nominee who is polling third. The day before, on Shabbat, he visited The Jewish Center, an Orthodox synagogue on the Upper West Side. Later in the day, he headed to Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn, where Mamdani spoke last week.
- The Fifth Avenue Synagogue crowd was not unanimously anti-Sliwa, but they convened with the purpose of stopping Mamdani’s rise. One person accused Sliwa of being a “spoiler.”
- “We all love you, we want you to win,” said synagogue president Jacob Gold, who stood by Sliwa at the podium. “But you’re at 15%, and Cuomo’s at what percent? And Mamdani’s at what percent?” Gold said that he wanted Sliwa to “merge with Cuomo.”
- Cuomo himself urged Sliwa to drop out after the first general election debate on Thursday, during which he fielded barbs from both Sliwa and Mamdani.
- “There is no Curtis as a candidate. There’s Curtis as a spoiler,” Cuomo said to conservative Jewish radio host Sid Rosenberg on Friday. “If Curtis is not in the race, I win. And that’s a choice for Republicans. Do you vote for Curtis so you can say ‘I voted Republican’ and wind up electing Mamdani? Or do you vote for me?”
- Sliwa responded to his detractors, including Jewish billionaire Bill Ackman, in an interview with Jewish YouTuber Nate Friedman. He called Ackman a “jerk” who did not understand politics or live in New York City. To Cuomo, he said, “Get your own votes.”
🎂 Mamdani turns 34
- Mamdani celebrated his birthday on Saturday, taking the chance to address voters who express concerns about his age.
- “You’re worried about a 33-year-old becoming mayor of New York City,” he said in a video. “And I want you to know, I hear you. That’s why this weekend I’ll be making a change. I’m turning 34, and I’m committing that for every single day from here on out, I will grow older.”
- Mamdani asked supporters to mark his birthday by signing up for a canvassing shift. “The best gift is to beat Andrew Cuomo a second time,” he said.
👀 Trump watch
- President Trump continues to muse about the race. But after saying that Mamdani “hates Jewish people” and reiterating his threats to cut federal funding from New York under a Mayor Mamdani last week, he suggested over the weekend that the election result wouldn’t make much difference to him.
- “Would I rather have a Democrat than a communist? Barely. They’re almost becoming the same thing,” Trump said on Fox News on Sunday morning. “I don’t know that I’m going to get involved.”
The post Prominent NYC rabbi urges congregants to vote against Zohran Mamdani in Shabbat sermon appeared first on The Forward.
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Ro Khanna, Democratic critic of Israel, says he supports Zionism and the ‘right for Israel to exist’
(JTA) — California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, a leading critic of Israel in Congress, said he believes in the “right for Israel to exist” and that it is antisemitic to oppose the existence of a Jewish state.
Khanna made the comment during an interview Friday with J. The Jewish News of Northern California. Speaking with the J’s Gabe Stutman, Khanna said he supports Zionism and that modern antisemitism stems from “denying the idea of a Jewish state.”
“I believe that Zionism is self-determination of the Jewish people, and the right for Israel to exist. And I support that. What I don’t believe is if it means Greater Israel,” said Khanna, adding that he believes there needs to be a “two-state solution.”
Last month Khanna led an unsuccessful effort to push President Donald Trump to recognize Palestinian statehood at the United Nations General Assembly. He also said he agreed with a United Nations commission’s finding that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, making him one of only a handful of members of Congress to endorse the charge that Israel rejects.
“I agree with the UN commission’s heartbreaking finding that there is a genocide in Gaza,’ wrote Khanna in a post on X. “What matters is what we do about it — stop military sales that are being used to kill civilians and recognize a Palestinian state.”
Later in the interview, Khanna went on to frame his support for Jewish self-determination within his broader understanding of antisemitism.
“The original antisemitism was denying the Jewish people based on religion,” said Khanna. “Then, under Nazism, it became denying the Jewish people based on race. And today, antisemitism is denying the idea of a Jewish state. And I reject all three of those antisemitism premises.”
During the interview, Khanna also defended his appearance in a documentary earlier that month that featured antisemitic influencer Ian Carroll. Following the YouTube documentary’s release, where Khanna spells out his reasoning for rejecting AIPAC funding, he posted a clip that featured Carroll following his own interview.
“I had, genuinely, no idea who he was,” Khanna told Stutman. “I had never met him, never spoken to him. The broader point I was making was about PAC money, lobbyist money, not taking it. And not taking money from AIPAC. And that was what I said in the video. But once I came to know who he was — I, of course, unequivocally denounce his comments that somehow Israel was to blame for 9/11. I mean, that’s ludicrous.”
Khanna has also faced criticism for his appearance at the ArabCon conference last month, where several panelists defended Hamas as “Palestinian resistance” and laughed at the idea of condemning the Oct. 7 attacks.
“My brand, my politics, political philosophy is I will go and have a conversation anywhere,” said Khanna in defense of his appearance, adding that he told the conference he “unequivocally denounce the viewpoint that there was any justification for Hamas.”
The post Ro Khanna, Democratic critic of Israel, says he supports Zionism and the ‘right for Israel to exist’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Thousands of haredi Orthodox Jews protest Israeli military draft in New York City
(JTA) — Upwards of 10,000 haredi Orthodox Jewish men protested on Sunday night outside the Israeli consulate in New York City against the conscription of Orthodox Jews in the Israeli military.
The protest, which was organized by the Central Rabbinical Congress, a consortium of Orthodox Jewish groups, comes amid one of Israel’s tensest political debates: whether haredi men should be subjected to the draft.
Last year, the Israeli Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Israel must draft haredi Orthodox Jews into its army, ending the longstanding exemption for yeshiva students from military service that has existed since the country’s founding.
Since then, haredi men have staged frequent street protests in Israel, including outside the Knesset in Jerusalem, and the debate reached a new flashpoint last month when over 100 haredi Orthodox men were arrested for draft-dodging while attempting to leave the country for an annual pilgrimage for Rosh Hashanah.
Now, the protest movement has spilled over to New York, home to the largest haredi communities outside of Israel. At the rally Sunday night, rabbinic leaders from the anti-Zionist Satmar hasidic sect and Grand Rebbes spoke from cherry pickers above the protesters, who held signs reading “We would rather die as Jews than live as Zionist soldiers,” and “Stop terrorizing religious Jews,” according to footage of the event.
“Americans are unaware of Israel’s horrific treatment of Orthodox Jews. From night raids in Orthodox neighborhoods to checkpoints to arrests of Yeshiva students, Israel is persecuting the very religious people that it claims to protect,” said Rabbi Isaac Green, one of the New York protest’s organizers, in a statement. “Israel should not force Orthodox Jews to join an anti-religious army to fight wars against their religion.”
Rabbis Aaron and Zalman Teitelbaum, the two rival leaders of the Satmar sect, both urged their followers to join in the demonstration, marking one of the rare times they have organized over the past two years due to their policy of not protesting against Israel during times of war.
As more men arrived at the demonstration, the mass of protesters began spilling onto the street, leading to some clashes and shoving matches with police officers trying to control the crowd, according to amNewYork.
Currently, around 80,000 ultra-Orthodox men in Israel are believed to be eligible for service, and the IDF has called for 12,000 recruits to meet the needs posed by the war in Gaza.
The post Thousands of haredi Orthodox Jews protest Israeli military draft in New York City appeared first on The Forward.