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Jewish comedian Modi Rosenfeld, a mainstay for Orthodox audiences, is gay. So what?
(JTA) — Mordechi Rosenfeld, the Jewish comedian, insists that the recent Variety article in which he reveals he is married to a man is not a “coming out” piece.
“This article is showing that I’m a veteran comedian and I’m married to a man,” said Rosenfeld, who is known to his friends and fans by the nickname Modi. “This is it. It doesn’t feel like a coming-out piece to me because I’ve been out.”
Anyone who has listened closely to Rosenfeld’s podcast in the last year would know that he and his husband have been married since 2020. The pair talk about living and traveling together, and in a recent episode revealed they would be vacationing on Fire Island, which has a famous gay scene, with prominent gay Jewish cookbook author Jake Cohen.
But the news could easily have come as more of a surprise for one swath of Rosenfeld’s core audience: Orthodox Jews from communities like the one where he grew up, where LGBTQ inclusion remains an unfamiliar and often frowned-upon frontier. Rosenfeld has delivered his signature blend of highly informed Jewish comedy, which often digs into the technical details of Jewish law, on kosher Passover cruises; at benefits for Orthodox organizations including yeshivas, Young Israel chapters and Hatzalah, the Orthodox ambulance service; and on the annual Chabad-Lubavitch movement telethon. But until recently, his routine has contained little whiff of his personal life — in fact, some of his jokes suggested to his fans that he had a wife named Stacy.
“Stacy” is in fact his manager and husband, Leo Veiga, a millennial raised Catholic in South Florida whom the 52-year-old Israel-born, Long Island-raised comedian met on the New York City subway in 2015. The split content has reflected Rosenfeld’s long-espoused belief that the only way comedy can work is to tailor the set to the crowd.
“Even though some religious organization has brought me in and people are coming to see me, I understand I’m under the umbrella of a certain demographic that I need to respect and know the audience,” Rosenfeld told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “If you put me in front of an audience, I give them what they need. And they don’t need gay material — they need the material for this audience.”
“But when I’m on the road doing my material, I can do whatever I want,” he added. “They came to see me.”
The Variety article was born of Rosenfeld’s deepening belief that it’s possible to merge his Orthodox and gay identities more publicly — something that he has long done as a congregant and sometimes-cantor at the Modern Orthodox synagogue he attends in the East Village.
“The prayers are done in an Orthodox way. And somehow, gays have been attracted to come to this synagogue,” he said. “We have a whole group of gay people and we have a whole group of trans people welcome.”
“The rabbi’s thing is no one should ever feel bullied, no one should ever feel excluded,” Rosenfeld said. “Be you. Be a proud Jew and be you.”
Rosenfeld’s “not a coming out piece” is significant and part of a broader recent pattern, according to Rabbi Steve Greenberg, the founding director of Eshel, an advocacy organization for LGBTQ Orthodox Jews and their families.
“You used to leave. Coming out meant [you] had to go. Because you could either stay and be silent, or speak up and leave,” Greenberg said. “What has begun to change the story is people insisting on not choosing between their religious identities and their queer identities and insisting on staying in Orthodox communities.”
The Variety piece comes at a time of tension around LGBTQ inclusion in Modern Orthodoxy. Yeshiva University — where Rosenfeld studied at the Belz Cantorial School of Music — has made headlines for fighting for the right not to recognize an LGBTQ student club. This month, a synagogue affiliated with the Modern Orthodox flagship also made news for its treatment of a transgender congregant; Yeshiva’s top Jewish law authority said she could no longer pray there.
The episode ignited strong feelings for Rosenfeld.
“To torture someone like that, somebody who’s religious, who’s keeping the mitzvahs, who’s teaching, who’s doing that, and to open that up and to do what they did is so terrible,” Rosenfeld said. “It’s so, so terrible. That’s the only thing I can tell you.”
For Rosenfeld, there’s no tension between Jewish observance and being gay — although his articulation of why reveals an awareness of the pain that others might feel in trying.
“Being gay, you can keep Shabbos, you can keep kosher, you can keep anything you want to do,” he said. “You can learn Talmud, you can learn Torah, the only thing you can’t do is kill yourself. You can’t commit suicide. That’s not even on the table as an option.”
When Rosenfeld shared the Variety article on his Instagram page, the vast majority of the nearly 800 comments left by fans and friends showed support for his public embrace of his gay identity.
“It’s amazing that you announce that you are gay,” one fan wrote. “You are an example to all the Jews struggling with their gayness. You are a role model to me. Cheers.”
“I think it’s great you can be out with so many of your orthodox fans,” wrote Peter Fox, a freelance writer and Jewish community advocate. “What a wonderful gift of visibility.”
But a few commenters said they would boycott his work in the future, some citing interpretations of Jewish law.
“I can’t believe you are gay,” wrote one person. “What a giant Hillul HaShem [desecration of the name of God]. I lost all respect for you. Unfollowing now. And good luck to you when it’s time to be judged by The Almighty.”
Rosenfeld doesn’t anticipate that the Variety article will lose him any gigs. If anything, he says, it might actually increase his audience. Since he has started adding gay material to his repertoire, his audiences have been increasingly LGBTQ, like at some of the “Holidazed” shows he performed in December at Sony Hall in New York.
Still, he noted, “onstage, I’m more Jewish than I am gay.”
Rosenfeld began to dabble in comedy while working on Wall Street early in his career, when his colleagues realized he was good at impressions. In the last several years, he has emerged as a leader in a wave of comedians focusing on their Jewish identities, even playing himself on an episode of HBO’s “Crashing.” Five years ago, New York City’s then-mayor, Bill de Blasio, declared June 26 as “Mordechi Modi Rosenfeld Day” in honor of his contributions to the artistic community, and last August, Rosenfeld co-hosted the first-ever Chosen Comedy Festival on Coney Island with his frequent comedy partner Elon Gold to a crowd of 4,000. The Jewish comedy show has since gone on to an audience in Miami and will head to Los Angeles in February.
Meanwhile, Rosenfeld has embarked on a steady stream of sold-out shows on multiple continents himself, while enjoying several viral moments. In one bit that was shared thousands of times last year, he pilloried the practice of taking people who have made antisemitic comments to Holocaust museums, joking, “It just gives them ideas.”
Since comedy clubs reopened after their pandemic closures, Rosenfeld has worked on new material at New York’s iconic Comedy Cellar, where patrons’ phones are kept in sealed envelopes and filming is prohibited. The absence of phones gives comedians the freedom to workshop new material — and a lot of that new material, for Rosenfeld, has been focused on living with a millennial husband.
Rosenfeld and Veiga’s story is a classic New York City meet-cute: The comedian was riding the 6 train when he felt a tap on his shoulder. It was Veiga, then an intern at CAA, the talent agency, introducing himself.
“And then we went on a date,” Rosenfeld told JTA. “I picked him up and I brought him to the Comedy Cellar, where I was performing. And he didn’t know that.”
After his 15-minute set, Rosenfeld returned to the comedians’ table, where he had nabbed Veiga a seat, to gauge his date’s reaction. “I said, ‘So I’m a comedian.’ And then we had dinner, we had two more dates, and then he moved in.”
In the eight years they have been together, Rosenfeld credits Veiga with facilitating the evolution of his career as both his husband and manager. During the COVID lockdown, as comedians everywhere found themselves unable to perform in their usual crowded clubs, Rosenfeld says he thought he was getting a break from work — but it was Veiga who suggested a pivot to video. That’s when Rosenfeld grew his online presence and developed his now-beloved characters, like the Israeli know-it-all “Nir, not far” (married to the fictitious, off-camera Stacy) and the Hasidic Yoely, who reviews quarantine-era TV shows and runs for president.
While Yoely is a character, Rosenfeld, too, is religiously observant. He wraps tefillin in the morning, even while touring, and he and Veiga keep a kosher home. Though Veiga is not Jewish — the couple had a civil wedding — he attends synagogue with Rosenfeld, his Hebrew and Yiddish pronunciation is excellent, and he is extremely well-versed in Jewish ideas and lingo. That has occasionally enabled him to stand up for their relationship when encountering people who believe it is forbidden: In one anecdote on the podcast, Rosenfeld shared that at a Shabbat retreat at a yacht club in notoriously conservative Orange County, California, a man at the couple’s table told them that the Bible says two men should not live together. Veiga retorted that the Bible says people should not mix wool and linen — implying that not all strictures are always followed, and leaving the man dumbfounded, according to Rosenfeld’s account.
Veiga has been part of Rosenfeld’s podcast behind the scenes since it began in August 2021, and began appearing on-screen in the taped recordings in December of that year. (In a sign of how deeply Jewish content is woven into his own life, he once wore a kitschy shirt referring to “muktzeh,” the prohibition of touching or moving certain objects on Shabbat.) Rosenfeld co-hosts the podcast with Jewish comedian Periel Aschenbrand, where guests include a mix of mostly comedians with the occasional rabbi (one time, Alan Dershowitz made an appearance).
Leo Veiga, left, wears a t-shirt bearing the Hebrew word “muktzeh,” which refers to a prohibition of touching certain objects on Shabbat. (Screenshot via YouTube)
In the December episode with Jake Cohen, Rosenfeld and Veiga recounted their experience at the Republican Jewish Coalition meeting in Las Vegas. The couple, who admitted to following RuPaul’s Drag Race more closely than American politics, learned what causes Republican Jews were almost universally excited by (Israel and antisemitism on college campuses) and what causes they were lukewarm on (abortion) solely based on the volume of applause in the room. They also said they were surprised by how welcomed they felt as a gay couple at a Republican event, and remarked on how many of the political figures and donors they met were excited to show them pictures of all the other gay couples they knew.
Veiga said in the episode that he didn’t learn until after they agreed to the gig that the conference lineup included Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence, whom Rosenfeld said he found “a little creepy.” Both men have advanced policies and ideas that are anti-LGBTQ.
Rosenfeld said he had no principled objection to performing for Republicans, or anyone else.
“If the Democrats want to invite me, I will go there,” Rosenfeld said. “If Al-Qaeda wants to invite me, we’re there. A check and a microphone, and I’m there. It’s simple.”
The aside came as Rosenfeld, Veiga and Cohen discussed one of Rosenfeld’s favorite ideas — what he calls “moshiach energy.”
“Moshiach energy,” as Rosenfeld puts it, is akin to the Jewish principle of loving your neighbor as yourself and then putting that energy into the universe in order to bring about the coming of the Messiah. The idea is inspired by the last leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch Orthodox movement, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson — a major source of inspiration for Rosenfeld, who studied at a Lubavitch yeshiva.
Comedian Modi Rosenfeld Rosenfeld speaks with Rabbi Manis Friedman, right, and comedian Periel Aschendbrand on his podcast in November 2021. A portrait of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the last rebbe of the Chabad Orthodox movement, is behind Rosenfeld. (Screenshot via YouTube)
It’s an attitude that he says is embodied by his synagogue, which he has attended since it opened in the 1990s.
“I am so fortunate to belong to a synagogue, Sixth Street Community Synagogue, where when you put moshiach energy out, it comes right back at you,” he said.
Schneerson considered homosexuality a sin and advocated for Jews to choose not to yield to homosexual urges. Last year, on his podcast, Rosenfeld hosted a Chabad rabbi, Manis Friedman, the former translator for the Rebbe, who espouses the same view; he said he finds Friedman inspiring even though he may not agree with all of Friedman’s views. It’s one of many instances where Rosenfeld has been able to square his identities in ways that have proved challenging for others.
Greenberg, the executive director of Eshel, agreed with Rosenfeld’s hypothesis that the Variety article would have little effect on the comedian’s ability to book gigs — and he said Rosenfeld’s commitment to Orthodox ideas and practices could work in his favor.
“Maybe some of those organizations that have hired him before will actually think this is an even more important reason to have him,” Greenberg postulated. “Some people will see this as a kind of affirmative step that you don’t have to abandon your religious identity because you’re gay.”
It’s an idea that is central to one of Rosenfeld’s signature jokes. For him, being Jewish means praying with tefillin every day, eating kosher food and observing Shabbat — while also being married to his husband.
“I always say: the Jewish people — we’re not the chosen people, we’re the choosing people,” Rosenfeld said. “Being Jewish is a lifestyle — like Equinox.”
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The post Jewish comedian Modi Rosenfeld, a mainstay for Orthodox audiences, is gay. So what? appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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‘We need to save our country’: Bay Area Israelis fly home to vote in pivotal election
(JTA) — This article was produced by J.–The Jewish News of Northern California in partnership with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
ABOARD EL AL FLIGHT 48 — Ayelet Frank was one of the first people to check in on Sunday, Oct. 25, for a nonstop flight from San Francisco to Tel Aviv. A resident of Redwood City, California since she left Israel in 1984, she is flying back for one reason: to vote in the Oct. 27 election.
It’s the first time in her more than 40 years abroad that she is going back to cast a ballot.
“This election is unique. It’s very different than any other,” she told J. “It’s about Israel’s very existence. This election is between the destruction of the country, or building it up in a positive way.”
A native of Kibbutz Ein Harod in the Jezreel Valley, she is spending only two days in Israel before returning to California. It’s a long way to travel just to vote, but, she said, “It’s that important.”
Frank was one of 271 passengers on El Al flight 48, which landed in Israel less than 24 hours before the polls open. It was the first nonstop flight from San Francisco to Israel since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack. Many on board were part of what one organizing group estimates is a wave of 67,000 Israelis abroad flying home for an election widely seen as a referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In a tight race, the Israel Democracy Institute said, that many voters could swing nearly two Knesset seats.
Those travelers are spending thousands of dollars for the chance to cast their ballots in what many are calling the most consequential election in Israel’s history.
The mood in the boarding area at the San Francisco International Airport was buoyant. Lots of people seemed to know one another and were running up to hug friends and chat excitedly. There were families with children and plenty of babies in strollers and carriers. There were a smattering of black kippahs as well as one Hasidic family. There were also Israeli residents returning home from vacation in the Bay Area. But judging from the conversations as well as from people interviewed by J., most passengers were Israeli expats flying back to vote.
Capitola resident Udi Pardo left Israel in 1983, a year before Frank. Most of his family still lives in Israel and he visits twice a year. But for him, this was his first time flying home for an election.
“I never tried to go and vote before because I don’t live there,” he said. “But now it’s a national emergency. I can’t not go.”
“Israel is on the verge of an abyss,” he continued, saying that he has not yet decided between Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar and Naftali Bennett’s B’Yachad — both center-right parties opposed to Netanyahu’s government. “We need to bring back sanity to Israel and to Israeli politics and reestablish liberal democracy because it’s about to disappear.”
The Oct. 27 election is the first since the Hamas attack and the war that followed. The stakes are so high, pundits say, that Israelis living abroad are flying home to vote in what appear to be unprecedented numbers. Israel does not allow absentee voting, except for diplomats and other state employees posted abroad, so expats who want to cast a ballot must do so in person.
The 67,000 estimate comes from Fly & Vote, a project of the U.S.-based America Israel Democracy Coalition to help expats navigate the logistics of participating in the election. The group cautioned that the figure is based on a voluntary August survey and its own registration data, not a count of arrivals. No comparable data exists for previous elections.
Israel’s Likud-led government has tried to impede Fly & Vote’s efforts with legal action, which was blocked in October by Israel’s Supreme Court. The government reportedly also considered closing or slowing down traffic at Ben Gurion International Airport in the days before the election. Analysts say this is because Netanyahu and his allies believe that many, if not most, of those responding to Fly & Vote’s initiative will vote against the current government.
Indeed, that seemed to be true of most of the expats on this El Al flight from San Francisco. Every person interviewed spoke about the “need for change” in Israel’s government, and those who declared their support for candidates mentioned either Eisenkot or leaders of other anti-Netanyahu parties. The Silicon Valley-based Israeli expat group UnXeptable, which emerged to protest Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul and has become a major anti-Netanyahu voice globally, had a large presence on the flight, with about a dozen key members sporting light blue T-shirts emblazoned with the date of the election and the Hebrew words for “Flight for Change.”
They were handing out shirts to any other passengers who would take them, some of whom put them on right away. Local TV stations showed up for an UnXeptable press conference held at the check-in counter.
Roni Bar-Niv of Sunnyvale is one of several people interviewed who is spending just a few days in Israel, in her case enough time to vote, turn around and fly back to the Hebrew-language school she runs near her Silicon Valley home.
In the 26 years since she left Givatayim, a suburb of Tel Aviv, Bar-Niv said, she visits Israel four or five times a year but she, too, has never flown back to vote until now.
“I thought I didn’t need to vote because I don’t live there,” she said. But everything changed, she added, after Oct. 7. “If we pay taxes — we have an apartment there — and if we send money for the war effort, and if we have children there — my daughter made aliyah five years ago — we need to go and vote,” she said. “The direction our country is going is very bad, for Israelis living there and for us also.”
Berkeley resident Rivka Amado left Jerusalem 22 years ago. A retired ethics professor and Ladino singer, she said it’s the duty of Israeli expats to show up.
“This election is critical, and it’s important for every Israeli to vote, whether you live here or there,” she said.
The surge in emigration since Oct. 7 has also swelled the pool of Israelis abroad. Some 82,800 Israelis left the country in 2024, according to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, up from 55,000 in 2023. More than 69,000 left in 2025, the Times of Israel reported, the second straight year that emigration outpaced immigration.
Gilad Kariv, an opposition lawmaker from the Democrats party who chairs the Knesset’s Diaspora Affairs Committee, has warned of a “tsunami of emigration,” according to the Jerusalem Post. He has called it a “strategic threat to the future of Israel” tied to the government’s conduct.
J Street regional director Shimrit Braun Kamin (left) hugs Galit Lipsitz Goldental near the El Al counter at San Francisco International Airport, Oct. 25, 2026. (Aaron Levy-Wolins/J. Staff/Report for America)
Experts point to the war in Gaza and opposition to Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul as driving forces, suggesting that many recent emigrants are critical of the government.
Thirty-seven parties are on the Oct. 27 ballot, but only about a dozen are expected to clear the 3.25% electoral threshold needed to win Knesset seats. With Netanyahu’s Likud party polling neck-and-neck with his main opponent, Eisenkot’s Yashar party — the final pre-election polls show Yashar winning 22 to 23 seats to Likud’s 19 to 21 — every seat matters.
Neither party is projected to win a clear majority, meaning either one will have to negotiate intensely to form a governing coalition.
That’s why these expats have ponied up the dough, packed their bags and jumped on planes.
Eyal, a tech designer in his 40s who has been living in Mountain View since 2004, declined to give his last name because of his former job in the Israeli military. This, too, is his first trip home to vote.
In general, he said that he agrees with Israelis who believe expats should not have a voice in elections that no longer affect them personally.
“But in this particular election, I think a lot of Israelis want us to come and vote,” he said. “I know my parents do.”
Shlomi from Sunnyvale, who left Israel more than 15 years ago and also declined to give his last name, is worried that if there is not a new government, Israel’s brain drain will accelerate.
“We are in the final moments,” he said, likening Israel’s political situation to a soccer game. “If the government doesn’t change, I think a lot of good people who contribute to the future of the country will leave Israel.”
Shlomi is also worried that Israel will lose its partnership with the United States.
“It’s not about right or left,” he said, declining to say how he’ll vote. “It’s about dignity, about taking responsibility, about leaders that actually make decisions for the people rather than their personal benefit.”
Iddo Tal, a Jerusalem native, has lived in Palo Alto for 15 years, where he is a tech entrepreneur and teaches fundraising to startup founders around the world. He has launched “five start-ups and two kids,” he said, joking that “the kids have been a huge success.”
Unlike most of those interviewed, he has traveled back to vote before. He made the trip to visit his parents but timed it around an election.
“They always say every election is historic, and they’re always right,” he said.
Tal believes expats should vote, saying it keeps Israelis at home and abroad closely connected. “There’s something very exciting about making the Israeli diaspora part of Israel [proper], by coming back to fight, to raise money, to vote,” Tal said.
Hadar Aviram teaches law at UC Law San Francisco while studying to become a rabbi through Hebrew Union College. Born in Israel, she grew up “all over the world” and landed in San Francisco in 2001 for grad school. She wore one of the blue UnXeptable shirts and has joined some of the group’s protests.
“Let’s start with taking accountability for the Oct. 7 massacre and the ensuing war,” she said. “And long before that, we were all hostages to this hateful, bigoted, corrupt government.… I’m flying to release us from him, and him from us.”
She bristles at people who don’t understand why Israelis like her feel so strongly about this election.
“If some of those ignorant folks ask what Zionism is, I invite them to look around at all the people here who have packed their bags and emptied their savings accounts because they want to save their country,” she said, waving at the crowded boarding area. “When you love something very, very, very much, you are willing to go to great lengths to save it.”
The post ‘We need to save our country’: Bay Area Israelis fly home to vote in pivotal election appeared first on The Forward.
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El-Sayed campaign disavows PAC ad linking US inflation to Israel
(JTA) — Abdul El-Sayed’s Senate campaign disavowed a pro-Palestinian group’s new ad that critics say invokes antisemitic tropes about U.S. support for Israel.
The ad comes from Rebellion PAC, which is fronted by left-wing political commentator Cenk Uygur. It depicts a couple in a supermarket saying they cannot afford groceries because they have to set money aside “for killing Palestinians.” It concludes by stating that the Michigan Democrat’s GOP opponent “is for they/them,” referring to Israelis.
In a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, an El-Sayed campaign representative said the ad “is not affiliated in any way” with his campaign and that it did not speak for him.
“Abdul is focused on pushing back against Trump’s agenda that is raising prices for Michiganders,” campaign spokesperson Roxie Richner said in the statement. “No one speaks for Abdul but himself and his campaign.”
Rebellion’s ad repurposes an ad originally released in 2024 for Uygur’s presidential campaign — but with a new ending that backs El-Sayed and knocks his Republican opponent, former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers.
“Why does Mike Rogers care so much about what Israelis want and so little about what you want?” the new ad asks. A voiceover then riffs on Republican ads from 2024 that attacked Democrats over LGBTQ issues.
“Mike Rogers is for they/them,” the voiceover states over photos of Israeli politicians Benjamin Netanyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. “Abdul El-Sayed is for you.”
A spokesperson for Rebellion PAC told JTA that the group is spending $1,000 on the ad, and that it will run online. Uygur, on X, stated on Friday that the ad would run “in Michigan.” Tensions among Jewish voters in the state are high: Many have expressed discomfort with El-Sayed’s strong criticism of Israel. The candidate has condemned antisemitism and looked to make inroads with Jewish voters.
“If you think this ad is antisemitic, you’ve lost your mind and you don’t know it,” the Rebellion PAC spokesperson, Kara Eastman, told JTA. “It’s saying we’re giving too much money to a foreign nation — and they’re misusing it. There’s nothing more normal than that. But when someone criticizes the government of Israel, and you hear ‘they hate all Jews,’ get clinical help.”
Shortly after Eastman’s response to JTA, Uygur himself added on X, “If you think this ad is antisemitic, you’re in a cult and don’t know it. You think Israel is owed all the money it wants from US and if Americans don’t hand it over — without complaint — they’re antisemites. That’s insane, but you don’t realize it because you’ve lost your mind.”
Michigan U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, a favorite of the pro-Israel community who endorsed El-Sayed after losing to him in the primary, called the ad “fearmongering” and “wrong.” She added that its makers were “blaming the high costs of our goods on the only Jewish homeland in the world.” Melissa Byrne, a progressive activist and former staffer for Jewish progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders, wrote that Uygur “clearly wants Abdul El-Sayed to lose by doing this ad.”
A spokesperson for Michigan Jews for Democracy, an ad hoc group of Jews in the state who have pledged to vote for El-Sayed, called the ad “crap” in an interview with JTA.
“If they honestly think this is going to help, then they honestly have no idea what is going on in this state or this race,” Stacie Chaiken, the group’s representative, told JTA. “They’re just playing into the hands of people who are really trying to hurt him.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post El-Sayed campaign disavows PAC ad linking US inflation to Israel appeared first on The Forward.
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U.S. and Israeli Jews are drifting apart? The data tell a different story.
(JTA) — This is part one of a two-part analysis based on the Jewish Federations of North America’s 2026 binational study of Jewish Americans and Jewish Israelis, exploring where the communities are aligned and where they differ. Part two will address where American and Israeli Jews see things differently, and why.
The last three years have been historic for both American and Israeli Jews. Israel has experienced the trauma and loss of Oct. 7 and the ensuing wars firsthand. Many American Jews have worked to support Israel, while experiencing a dramatic rise in security threats, antisemitism and attacks on Zionism at home. It would be understandable, therefore, if the result was two Jewish communities less connected to one another, each struggling to deal with its own challenges. And indeed, many headlines have focused on division, distance and disagreement.
But our data, gathered in May and June, are clear: American and Israeli Jews feel closer to one another today than we have in years, and that closeness has grown alongside the “surge” — the sustained rise in American Jewish engagement we’ve tracked since Oct. 7.
To be sure, our research also found places where American and Israeli Jews see things differently. We’ll take that on directly in an upcoming piece. But it is important to start with the reawakening of shared peoplehood since Oct. 7, an important development that is the foundation upon which all other discussions should begin.
The share of American Jews who describe Israelis as extended family or part of their own community has climbed from 46% to 62% since 2021. Today, fully 71% of American Jews feel emotionally attached to Israel. In contrast, the share of American Jews who say they feel no real connection at all to Jews in Israel has dropped by more than half since 2021, from 28% to 13%.
Israelis show movement in the same direction. The share calling American Jews extended family or part of their own community climbed from 45% to 53% over the same period, while the share saying they feel nothing in common with American Jews dropped from 14% to 10%.
Seventy-nine percent of Israelis and 56% of Americans affirm that Jews around the world, regardless of where they live, share a common fate and must act accordingly. Most also reject the idea that Jewish life in the diaspora is a “problem” to be solved through aliyah, or immigration to Israel. Early Zionist thought was built in part on the concept of shlilat hagalut, the “negation of exile,” the belief that Jewish life outside Israel was inherently unsustainable and needed to be resolved through return to the land. That idea has receded sharply from mainstream Jewish and Zionist thought since the state’s founding.
This deepening sense of shared peoplehood shows up in action, not just sentiment. In the first two years following Oct. 7, the Jewish federation system raised $908 million through the Israel Emergency Campaign, funding more than 4,200 grants to 877 organizations across 208 communities in Israel. North American Jews made that giving possible. Israeli organizations and Israeli society did the work of turning it into recovery on the ground. Sixty-eight percent of Israelis said that American Jewish philanthropic giving after Oct. 7 made them feel that Diaspora Jews genuinely care about Israel and Israelis. (Jewish federations raised and allocated $908 million in emergency support for Israel following the attacks, before shifting to a new giving framework to “Rebuild Israel”).
As noted, the rise in a shared sense of peoplehood between U.S. and Israeli Jews closely mirrors the surge in Jewish engagement domestically that we’ve followed closely for three years. Engagement with Jewish life among American Jews is up 38% today, and that rise tracks with a rise in connection to Israel. That 38% reflects people who changed what they do. Another 12% felt a stronger pull toward Jewish identity and pride in peoplehood without yet changing their behavior. Together, that’s roughly half of AmericanJews registering some shift in connection since Oct. 7.
When we asked American Jews in open-ended discussion why they feel connected to Israel, the top reasons were remarkably consistent: seeing Israel as a safe place for Jews, including for themselves; seeing Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people; having a sense that Israel is where Jewish history began; believing that Jews are responsible for one another, and holding religious or biblical connection. Others pointed to feeling more whole in Israel, the belief that the Holocaust made a Jewish homeland necessary, that Israel is part of their own culture and simply feeling pride in Israelis themselves.
While much of this growing sense of interconnectedness emerges from the events of the last few years, especially the shock American Jews felt on Oct. 7 and the pain Israelis feel watching antisemitism rise around the world, there are clear elements of the results that we can build upon, influence and encourage. American Jews who have traveled to Israel once are 1.7 times as likely to feel real commonality with Israeli Jews. American Jews who have traveled to Israel more than once are 3.8 times more likely to feel commonality with Israeli Jews. American Jews who have lived in Israel, perhaps not surprisingly, are 11.2 times more likely to share this sense of peoplehood.
The same holds true in reverse. Visiting the U.S. as a tourist doesn’t move an Israeli’s sense of connection to American Jews. But compared to Israelis overall, those who participate in Jewish communal life while visiting are 2.8 times as likely to feel a sense of peoplehood with American Jews, and those who serve as emissaries, work at a Jewish camp or otherwise live inside an active American Jewish community while in the U.S. are 2.6 times as likely.
This is also true for Israeli Jews who encounter American Jews in Israel. Eighty-seven percent of Israeli Jews with real, engaged contact with American Jews feel commonality with us at far higher rates, compared to 52% among those with no contact. This gap holds even after taking into account religious practice and political ideology. Fifty-seven percent of Israeli Jews with real contact describe American Jews as siblings or extended family, compared to 45% among those with little or no contact.
We are in another challenging season for the Jewish people. Upcoming elections in Israel and the United States bring their own pressures and highlight disagreements both within and between our Jewish communities. It would be easy to conclude that we have more differences than we have commonalities, and to approach discussions from a place of distance and division. But there is opportunity in this tense moment to recognize our deep sense that we are one community.
Our data confirm that today we feel closer than ever, and we recognize that our lives are shaping each other’s. Perhaps even more importantly, our data show what we can do to strengthen and perpetuate this trend. We need to keep investing in things we know build connection: more travel, more Israeli emissaries in North American communities and more programs that put people in real contact — especially partnership programs between US and Israeli communities like Partnership2Gether, which has connected people and communities for more than three decades.
And we need to scale innovation that will enable shared volunteer projects, philanthropic partnerships across both communities, stronger business and professional ties and digital opportunities to learn from one another. These opportunities can ensure impact when travel is impractical, reach those who are less engaged and ensure that this sense of connection to and understanding of Jews across the world is accessible to everyone in our greater Jewish family and community.
Our tradition teaches that “kol yisrael arevim zeh bazeh,” all Jews are responsible for one another. That responsibility isn’t theoretical. It is the reason we show up for each other in moments that matter. Three years after Oct. 7, our data tell us we are still showing up.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post U.S. and Israeli Jews are drifting apart? The data tell a different story. appeared first on The Forward.
