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Jewish groups ask Pentagon to stop Messianic chaplains from wearing Jewish insignia
(JTA) — For more than a century, U.S. military chaplains have worn insignia identifying their faith — a cross for Christians and tablets with a Star of David for Jews. Now Jewish chaplaincy groups are asking the Pentagon to intervene after chaplains from Messianic Judaism, a Christian movement that blends Jewish practices with belief in Jesus, began wearing the Jewish symbol.
The effort is being led by the Aleph Institute, a Chabad-affiliated organization that endorses Jewish chaplains for the U.S. military.
Aleph asked the military to investigate the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations, which endorses Messianic chaplains, and to revoke its endorsement authority if it continues allowing clergy to wear Jewish insignia traditionally reserved for Jewish chaplains.
“It is clear that [the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations] is acting in a manner incompatible with the interfaith cooperation and respect that has defined 150 years of U.S. military chaplaincy,” Aleph wrote in a letter to the Armed Forces Chaplains Board.
In a view shared by many Jews, Aleph suspects that the Messianic movement is a facade — a deceitful tactic aimed at proselytization.
“They have engaged in heavily deceptive behavior, all for the purpose of trapping unsuspecting Jews into the belief that Jesus is part of Jewish theology,” Aleph’s letter said. “Due to persecution, forced conversion, and extreme tactics employed by many Christian countries over the millennia proselytization of Jews is considered an antisemitic tactic.”
Military chaplains serve as clergy and counselors for members of the armed forces, providing worship services, pastoral counseling and religious accommodations for troops and their families. Because chaplains may be the only clergy available in combat zones or remote postings, their insignia — patches and small metal pins worn on their uniforms — function as a quick signal of religious identity.
Aleph and other Jewish chaplaincy groups say the chaplaincy system is being undermined by the Messianic movement, whose adherents may identify as Jews but are not recognized as such by any denomination of Judaism.
Rabbi Sanford Dresin, Aleph’s vice president of military programs and a retired Army chaplain, warned in a separate letter that using Jewish symbols could mislead Jewish troops about who represents Judaism.
“The entire spectrum of American Jewry unequivocally opposes any insignia to be designed for wear by Messianic chaplains other than the cross,” Dresin wrote. “Any insignia containing a traditional Jewish symbol would be misleading to Jewish service members, and would be deceptive in nature.”
Other Jewish chaplaincy organizations have joined Aleph’s effort.
Rabbi Laurence Bazer, who endorses Reform, Conservative and Orthodox rabbis and cantors as military chaplains through the Jewish Chaplains Council, said Jewish groups are working together on the issue.
“In dealing with the Messianic chaplains and insignias, we stand with our partners, Aleph Institute, and others in our position,” Bazer said. “We’re in partnership, and we’re working toward resolving this so they are not using any sort of Jewish symbol.”
Modern Orthodox leaders have also raised concerns.
In a January letter to the Armed Forces Chaplains Board, the Rabbinical Council of America warned that the use of Jewish symbols by non-Jewish clergy could create confusion in the military chaplaincy system.
“In the military setting, insignia are not private expressions of belief,” RCA leaders wrote. “They are government-authorized identifiers that communicate a chaplain’s religious endorsement and pastoral role. The use of Jewish symbols by chaplains not endorsed by recognized Jewish bodies creates a serious risk of confusion and misrepresentation and conveys an appearance of official Jewish authenticity that does not exist.”
Messianic leaders reject the criticism and say their chaplains are simply following existing military policy.
Barney Kasdan, a leader of the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations who oversees the group’s military chaplaincy endorsements, said Messianic chaplains identify as Jews and therefore wear the same insignia as other Jewish chaplains.
“The tablets — the Ten Commandments — is the traditional Jewish insignia,” Kasdan said. “We identify as Jews, and as far as the Department of Defense is concerned, if you’re a Jewish denomination you wear the Jewish insignia.”
Kasdan said the organization currently has five Messianic chaplains serving in the military and three candidates in training. The group became an officially recognized chaplaincy endorser with the Department of Defense in 2017, he said.
Kasdan said Messianic leaders would be open to adopting a separate insignia if the Pentagon created a policy allowing one.
“We would be happy with our own distinctive insignia design that is different from the tablets,” he said. “But right now we’re just following the current policy.”
Messianic chaplains also say the Christian cross does not reflect their religious identity.
“A cross does not reflect who we are culturally,” Kasdan said. “If a chaplain wearing a cross is leading a Jewish-style service — reciting the Shema, using a siddur — Christians would say that’s misleading.”
The dispute comes at a moment when the military chaplaincy is under heightened scrutiny amid broader political debates about religious expression in the armed forces. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has signaled support for expanding religious expression protections for service members and chaplains, though the Pentagon has not announced any policy changes related to chaplain insignia.
Asked about the Jewish groups’ concerns, a Pentagon spokesperson said the department had received the correspondence but declined to comment further.
“As with all correspondence, the Department will respond directly to the authors as appropriate,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. “At this time, we don’t have anything to provide on this.”
One of the chaplains cited in Aleph’s complaint is James Burling, who serves with a Marine combat training battalion at in North Carolina. His religious training comes from Christian institutions, including a master of divinity from Azusa Pacific University, an evangelical Christian university, and graduate studies in pastoral counseling at Southern California Seminary.
Burling said in an interview that he wears the insignia his endorsing organization directs him to wear.
“I wear the insignia I am directed to by my endorser,” he said. “He directed me to wear the stone tablets with the Star of David on top.”
Burling describes himself as Jewish but says his religious practice takes place in Messianic congregations.
“I identify as Jewish,” he said. “But as far as what I practice, I attend a Messianic synagogue.”
He said he does not attempt to convert Jewish service members and instead focuses on pastoral care.
“If I meet Jewish Marines, I make sure they have what they need,” he said. “I give them Tanakhs. I make sure they have their scriptures. I don’t push anything on them.”
Burling pointed to a San Diego rabbi, Yoram Dahan, as someone familiar with his Jewish learning and involvement in the community. But Dahan said that while Burling had studied Torah with him, he never understood Burling to be Jewish.
“James studied Torah with us and he was very serious about it. He loves Israel. But of course he is Christian,” Dahan said.
“If he says he is Jewish, it is not true and it’s not good,” Dahan added. “The Messianics are a very dangerous group.”
Kasdan said Messianic chaplains hope the issue can be resolved cooperatively.
“We want to work in the spirit of cooperation and peace,” he said. “We’re just trying to serve the military and their families.”
But Aleph and other Jewish chaplaincy groups say the stakes go beyond theology.
Because Jewish service members may rely on insignia to identify clergy who represent their faith, particularly in remote or high-stress military settings, they argue that Jewish symbols should remain reserved for chaplains representing Judaism.
“This is not a theological dispute or an effort to exclude any individual from service,” the RCA letter says. “It is a matter of accuracy in government speech and the protection of religious freedom for a minority faith community that depends on clear institutional signals.”
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Ever the restless spirit, Tel Aviv-born architect and designer Ron Arad is still reinventing himself and his art
When the announcement was made on June 12 that Ron Arad, 75, has been appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), it marked another step in the Tel Aviv-born architect, artist and designer’s remarkably varied journey. Arad’s mother was the painter Esther Peretz-Arad and his father Grisha was a sculptor and photographer. After industrial design studies at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, Arad traveled to London to become an architect, and has remained based there ever since. Yet although he won early fame with his piquant, witty concepts for chairs, Arad has proven anything but sedentary over the past half-century. Indeed, a 2010 retrospective at London’s Barbican Art Gallery was titled “Restless.”
Despite this seemingly permanent shpilkes (restless agitation), humane consideration for the pathways of others has been a constant in Arad’s public projects. His design for Beit Shulamit (2025), a cancer treatment center at the HaEmek Medical Center in Afula, northern Israel, intended to serve Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Druze communities in Israel and Palestine, deliberately freed patients and visitors from “horrible hospital corridors,” Arad told an architectural periodical. Patients walking around the site are given views of nature outdoors at every turn, in a facility that is the first to offer specialist cancer treatment for residents of West Bank conflict zones, including the cities of Jenin and Nablus. Named in honor of Dr. Shulamit Katzman, a pediatrician, the building’s gently curved lines embrace the public.
This awareness of social cohesion is also present in an Arad sculpture on the Tel Aviv University campus. “Kesher” is dedicated to the estimated 4,000 Ethiopian Jews who died from adverse conditions in transition camps on the Sudanese border while trying to emigrate to Israel between 1979 and 1990. Composed of dynamically soaring, interwoven metal tubes, the artwork, wrapped around two live palm trees, a ubiquitous symbol of the Middle East, evokes an expedition. A repeated figure-eight symbolizes the endless continuity of the immigrants’ route and the resolve that it communicates.
In England, Arad assisted the National Health Service (NHS) in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. A flock of UK Jewish celebrities posed for photos wearing Arad-designed cotton masks, including actor Stephen Fry, comedian David Baddiel, and television host Natasha Kaplinsky. Despite lively colors, the masks, intended to be sold for fundraising, retained a somewhat tragic aura, like the grotesque permanent smile of Victor Hugo’s Gothic novel The Man Who Laughs.
Potential tragedy inherent in triumph likewise radiates from another Arad project, the Totzeret HaAretz (ToHA) tower, an office skyscraper in central Tel Aviv which was inspired by the shape of an iceberg. Its angular glass, built as the polar ice caps are rapidly melting and the fate of the passenger liner Titanic’s collision with an iceberg is particularly relevant, the ensemble when complete will include an 80-floor companion tower, Tel Aviv’s tallest building.
Similarly, Arad is aware of the agony of defeat as well as artistic victories he has experienced over the years. When his codesign for a National Holocaust Monument Ottawa in Canada failed to win a competition, Arad published the concept anyway. The result is a highly literary, theological rumination on the impact of the Shoah on modern Jewish history. Ever conscious of the pedestrian’s progress, Arad’s design featured concrete walls framing 22 narrow passageways, one for each country in which Jewish communities were decimated. These walls, spaced around a meter apart, would have allowed only one visitor to fit through at a time. The solitude would have been lessened by an architectural allusion to the covenant of the pieces (Brit Bein HaBetarim), the first of a series of covenants between God and the Patriarchs. In this narrative, God revealed himself to Abram (later Abraham), promising that his descendants would inherit the Land of Israel.
Less loftily or weighty with destiny, Arad’s chief promise as an artist is to his own creativity. He was so inspired by a melody by the American Jewish songwriter Jonathan Richman about shedding personal inhibition and pretension by accepting new, unfamiliar surroundings and contexts, that in all seriousness he informed an interviewer in 2005 that he wanted Richman’s tune, “I Was Dancing In The Lesbian Bar” to be played at his funeral. Another impeded project where dancing might have been at least delayed was a London Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre design, initially approved in 2017, but later bogged down by objections about its proposed site, Victoria Tower Gardens, next to the Houses of Parliament. However, in January, a Holocaust Memorial Act 2026 received Royal Assent, officially clearing a legal hurdle blocking the construction of Arad’s UK Holocaust Memorial; the recent conferral of a CBE by Charles III, known to take particular interest in Jews and Holocaust victims, represents further establishment endorsement of Arad and his work.
Despite this authorized approval, Arad looks likely to remain an offbeat spirit, drawing inspiration from a wide range of predecessors, including the Czernowitz-born Austrian Jewish creator Friedrich Jacob Kiesler who innovated with 1965’s “Shrine of the Book” in Jerusalem to house the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Aleppo Codex, among other texts. Kiesler was also responsible for an unbuilt architectural concept, the Endless House, a biomorphic, continuous form with no beginning, end, or even boundaries between floor, wall, and ceiling. Some Arad projects resemble completed versions of things Kiesler and his fellow Jewish surrealists might have only dreamed of.
When it is built, Arad’s Holocaust Memorial will pay tribute to several minority groups targeted by the Nazis, in addition to the Jews. The Learning Centre is intended to explore antisemitism, but also extremism, Islamophobia, racism, homophobia and other forms of prejudice in today’s society. Much of it will be underground, drawing visitors down narrow stairs into the exhibition space and learning center, in yet another example of Arad’s obsession with peregrinations, like a modern-day architectural Benjamin of Tudela, a medieval Jewish traveler. Ever shedding past identities, Arad told the 2005 interviewer that the living person he most admired was Bob Dylan, for “reinventing himself and for reinventing us.” In a comparable way, Ron Arad has also reworked his own optic to express modern Jewish identity in a variety of forms, as an excursion hampered by tragedy and ominous echoes at times, but also with the possibility of quick-witted celebration.
At last year’s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, Arad presented a bronze sculpture titled “I doubt therefore I think” (Dubito Ergo Cogito). Inviting museumgoers to sit on it, the artwork likely referred to a time-honored Jewish tradition of doubt as the mitzvah of questioning. This mitzvah has accompanied Arad’s career-long odyssey in the arts.
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New Jewish-Arab political party debuts in Israel, aiming to topple Netanyahu
A newly established Jewish-Arab political party debuted Tuesday and is joining the crowded field vying to take down Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition in Israel’s next election, slated for October.
Makom Lekulanu, which translates to A Place for Us All, ( is led by Rula Daood and Alon-Lee Green, co-founders of the Israeli-Palestinian coexistence organizing group. Other Standing Together leaders will also join the party, including Haifa City Council member Sally Abed; Ghadir Hani, a Palestinian peace and women’s rights activist; Itamar Avneri, a Tel Aviv-Jaffa city council member; and Yonatan Zeigen, whose mother, well-known peace activist Vivian Silver, was killed by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, in her home at Kibbutz Be’eri.
According to Daood and others who spoke at a press conference in Nazareth publicly launching the new party, Makom Lekulanu’s platform will focus on many of the same issues that Standing Together has organized around for years: peace, social justice, soaring violence and crime in Arab communities, the cost of living and climate justice.
Party leaders say they are running not only to oppose Netanyahu and his coalition, which currently includes far-right extremists National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, but to offer a fundamentally different vision.
“We are doing this because this is the last moment to save our society,” Daood told the modest crowd, many of whom were clad in the telltale purple that has become synonymous with Standing Together. “We are being abandoned, murdered; our future is going up in flames. And I know that in order to repair things, it is not enough to say only what we oppose. We also have to say what we support.”
“So today I am saying: no to Netanyahu, to Ben-Gvir, to Smotrich,” she continued, to enthusiastic applause. “But I am also saying yes. Yes to Israeli-Palestinian peace, yes to national and civil equality, yes to social justice.”The press conference took place at the scenic Rose Cafe in Nazareth, a choice that underscored the message its founders are trying to send. This is not, they insisted, a Jewish party with token Palestinian representation or an Arab party with a couple of Jewish allies, but what Daood called “a truly shared party, one of genuine partnership between Jews and Arabs.”
According to Abed, this means tearing down the arbitrary dividers that have been built around Jewish and Arab leadership.
“I have always been told, ‘You will be responsible for Arab society, and we will be responsible for Jewish society,’” she said. “But I want to lead and take responsibility for all of society, together with my Jewish partners.”
“That’s what A Place for Us All will be: taking responsibility for all of society, together, on the path to ending the occupation, to peace and to real equality.”
A decade organizing
The party grew directly out of Standing Together, the Jewish-Arab grassroots movement founded in 2015. Since the Oct. 7 attack, and the ensuing wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran, Standing Together has become one of Israel’s most visible anti-war and anti-occupation organizations, growing its membership more than tenfold and emerging as a prominent voice on the international stage as well.
Inside Israel, the movement has organized ceasefire protests and rallies calling for a hostage deal, protected aid convoys headed for Gaza from right-wing attacks, raised funds for bomb shelters in Bedouin communities and provided protective presence for Palestinians facing settler violence in the West Bank.
For Zeigen, the decision to join the slate is rooted in personal loss as well as political conviction.
“For years, I worked with people battling poverty, marginalization and trauma — the overwhelming majority of them as a result of institutional abandonment,” he said at the press conference. “On Oct. 7, I experienced that abandonment firsthand. My mother, Vivian Silver, did not survive the massacre at her kibbutz.”
“Out of the devastation of losing her, I made a decision,” he continued. “I left my job as a social worker, and since then I have dedicated my life to one thing: Israeli-Palestinian peace.”
Zeigen described his grief now intermingling with another emotion: fear for the future his children will inherit.
“That is why I insist on turning despair into action,” he said. “Because I refuse to accept bereavement as fate — not for Jews and not for Arabs, not for Israelis and not for Palestinians.”
The new party’s leaders have been careful to stress that Standing Together is a separate entity from A Place for Us All. In a joint statement issued ahead of the launch, Daood and Green said the movement would remain active and independent, with a “full and substantive separation — organizational, legal, financial and political” between Standing Together and A Place for Us All. Both Daood and Green said they will take unpaid leave from their leadership roles in the movement in order to run.
Daood said the move into electoral politics is a natural progression of what she and Green have helped create over the last decade.
“For 10 years now, we have been effecting change right where it was needed most. We know how to build this kind of power on the ground,” Daood told the Forward. “Now we want to take that power and translate it into votes so that we can effect change from within the Knesset.”
While rumors of a political run have swirled around Standing Together for months, Green said he and Daood felt they had finally reached a now-or-never moment.
“I truly believe we are at a critical juncture,” Green explained. “This is the point where the Israeli people either keep going down this path of ethnic cleansing and endless war and occupation and terrible quality of life, for both Palestinians and Jews living here — or we can turn around, right now, and go in the other direction, in the direction of life and peace and security for all.”
“The right wing in Israel very much understands we are at this juncture,” he added. “And they have been very clear about what they are offering. I could not live with myself if I didn’t offer an alternative to Israeli voters.”
Seeking an edge
A Place for Us All will face an uphill battle from the start.
Any party led by Standing Together’s founders is likely to intensify the criticism the movement already faces from right-wing Israelis who have branded them as traitors for speaking out against the occupation and the suffering in Gaza. Posters featuring images of Gazan children have been torn down, and activists, Green included, have been harassed by right-wing agitators, in some cases outside their own homes.
A Place for Us All is also already drawing criticism from within the Israeli left, where some fear that the addition of a new party could split an already fragile anti-Netanyahu camp. In Israel’s electoral system, any party that fails to cross the electoral threshold — currently set at just over 3% of the vote — receives no seats, meaning it cannot take part in the post-election negotiations that determine who will build the 61-seat coalition needed to form the next government.
Green strongly rejects this concern.
“Every poll makes clear that winning without Jewish-Arab partnership is impossible,” he argued. “The only path to replacing Netanyahu is to maximize turnout among Jewish and Palestinian citizens and ensure that they vote for the same political bloc.”
According to Green, only one in four Palestinian citizens between the ages of 18 and 24 is currently planning to vote. “But with our party running, that statistic jumps up to two out of four,” he said.
If the scene outside the cafe was any indication, the party’s message may already be resonating with at least some of the young people it hopes to bring into politics. As the press conference unfolded, groups of teenagers passing by stopped to cheer on the speakers.
Inside, excitement was also running high. At one point, activist Galit Mass-Ader openly wept as she embraced Ghadir Hani who is joining the party’s list.
“For me, this is a decision that has been years in the making. I’ve been working for peace and coexistence nearly my whole life,” Hani told the Forward. “But since October 7, there have been so many difficult moments of pain and despair.”
“This party is the exact opposite of that,” she said. “It is the embodiment of hope — hope that belongs to both Jews and Palestinians, and to all those who are ready to reject the old, stale politics in favor of a new, shared political system.”
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Trump says Syria would do a ‘better job’ of fighting Hezbollah than Israel
(JTA) — Syria would be better at tackling Hezbollah in Lebanon, U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday, as Israel’s presence in Lebanon continued to be an Achilles’ heel in the fledgling U.S.-Iran deal set to be formally signed in Geneva on Friday.
Trump said Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former leader of an al Qaeda-affiliated group who has fashioned himself as a modern statesman after taking power in 2024, could be more effective and less destructive than Israel has been.
“If Israel can’t do the job without killing everyone else, he will do the job, Syria will do the job,” Trump said in Evian, France, on the sidelines of the G7 Summit.
Trump accused Israel of taking too long to oust the Iranian proxy group from Lebanon, just one day after he said that he himself might intervene by speaking directly with Hezbollah.
Trump also said Tuesday that “regime change” had never been the goal of the war with Iran and described Iran’s current leadership as “rational,” “smart” and “strong.” The president said the deal would prevent Iran from acquiring, building or developing a nuclear weapon.
The Iran deal to end months of hostilities between Washington and Tehran was digitally signed on Sunday, according to Trump’s vice president, JD Vance. Its terms have not been published, but officials have said that it also includes an end to hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, even though Israel is not a party to the agreement. Separate talks have been held in Washington between Lebanese and Israeli officials toward a peace deal that Hezbollah has so far rejected.
Israel has insisted that its army will remain in southern Lebanon to prevent Hezbollah attacks against communities in northern Israel. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told reporters in Tehran on Tuesday that the deal with Washington was contingent on an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory and a halt to the fighting, according to the state-affiliated Press TV.
Trump addressed the issue of Hezbollah on Tuesday in France during a meeting with Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, whose country has been among those playing a mediating role between the U.S. and Iran.
“Israel is fighting Hezbollah too long, and too many people are being killed, and you do not have to knock down an apartment house every time you are looking for someone,” Trump said.
“There are a lot of people in those apartment houses, and they are not all Hezbollah, and I suggested to Israel that Syria should take care of Hezbollah, and to be honest with you, I think they will do a better job at it,” he stated.
Trump downplayed any tension between himself and his ally in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, even though he admitted that he had been upset by Netanyahu’s decision to attack Hezbollah in Beirut on Sunday just hours before the Iran deal was announced.
At one point in his remarks Tuesday Trump described the relationship as “unbelievable” and “effective,” and when asked if there was tension between the two leaders, responded “no,” even as he gave examples of how Netanyahu’s handling of Lebanon has frustrated him.
“I didn’t like that two hours before we were signing the agreement … that there was an attack in Lebanon, it was right in Beirut. I did not like it, I let them [Israel] know it,” Trump said, adding that the Hezbollah drone attack on Israel that prompted Israel’s retaliation was minor.
“You can do too much also,” Trump said, explaining that he “was not happy” with how Israel conducted itself in Lebanon, where it should have been “able to do the job faster. It just goes on and on [in a way that] throws a negative light on the big deal.”
Still, Trump said he did not think that Lebanon would derail the agreement with Tehran, describing it as a “minor war.”
Lebanon aside, Israel is concerned that the Iran deal strengthens the Islamic Republic, which it had hoped would be overthrown as a result of the war, and that the deal would allow it to continue to pursue a nuclear and ballistic missile weapons program. That the deal allows for more money to flow to the heavily sanctioned regime has only fueled that concern.
“This deal is a wall to a nuclear weapon,” Trump said, rejecting the idea that U.S. funding was a part of the agreement. “We are not investing any money. We have no obligation to invest any money in Iran,” he said.
Trump underscored the danger to the region and to Israel should Iran become a nuclear power and said the war and this deal prevented that. Echoing comments he has made before, he said, “Without me, Israel would not exist right now.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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