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Jews let go of hostage rituals with gratitude and grief
(JTA) — Like most synagogues, Congregation Beth El in South Orange, New Jersey added new rituals after the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks that killed 1,200 in Israel, saw another 251 taken hostage and launched a grinding war between Israel and Hamas.
The Conservative congregation hung a “bring them home now” sign out front on behalf of the hostages. Rabbi Jesse Olitzky added the “Acheinu” prayer for redeeming captives to the weekly Shabbat service, and each week read the biography of a hostage. As the war raged on, the congregation sang songs of peace.
There and elsewhere, congregants wore yellow hostage ribbons and pins on their lapels, and dog tags with the names of the missing. Some families lit extra candles on Shabbat. Rachel Goldberg-Polin, whose son Hersh would eventually be listed among the dead in Gaza, popularized the wearing of a piece of masking tape on which she wrote the number of days since the hostages were taken.
This week, as the last 20 living hostages were returned to Israel as part of a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas, many Jews are relieved to be ending these rituals — even as they question whether it is right to do so and wonder how to channel their prayers and practices toward whatever comes next. Twenty-four deceased hostages are believed to be in Gaza, and even as soldiers return home and Gazans reclaim what’s left of their former lives, an enduring peace seems far away.
At Beth El, the Acheinu and lawn sign will stay in place until the bodies are returned. In the meantime, Tuesday night’s celebration of Simchat Torah will be a chance to experience a sense of relief members haven’t felt in two years.
“Like so many we haven’t been able as a people to move forward and get to Oct. 8 until the hostages came home,” Olitzky said Monday, hours after Hamas released the living hostages. “And now there is a sense of being able to exhale and breathe and, God willing, to move forward, to rebuild, and for all Israeli citizens and for Palestinians to have opportunities to build peace.”
This week, rabbis and Jews in the pews are asking if it is time to move forward.
Rabbi Yael Ridberg, the recently retired spiritual leader of Congregation Dor Hadash in San Diego, said she would remove the ribbon and dog tag she wears when the bodies of the deceased hostages are returned.
“I look forward to tucking them away, but not disposing of them,” she wrote in response to a journalist’s query. “I will stop wearing them when all the deceased hostages are returned. These are keepsakes of a time worth remembering, as hard as it has been for the last two years.”
Ronit Wolff Hanan, the former music director at Congregation Beth Sholom in Teaneck, New Jersey, said she is not sure what to do with the ribbon pin and dog tags she’s worn for most of the past two years. She’s torn between “this unbelievable release and relief and joy,” and sadness that there are still 24 bodies yet to be returned.
“My whole thing is, well, what do we do know?” said Wolff Hanan, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen whose son served over 300 days in the Israeli reserves during the war. “I keep thinking about the long, difficult road all of these hostages and families have ahead of them, and it’s just unimaginable. But also I’m thinking about, when it is really over? We don’t know if this is the dawn of a new era or if we are going to go back to the same old, same old.”
Her partner, Rabbi Eli Havivi, offered his own solution to a similar dilemma: In synagogue on Monday morning, he wore his hostage dog tags, but covered with blue painter’s tape, in order to suggest that “it’s over, but it is not over.”
On a Facebook page for Jewish women, a number of members spoke of their reluctance to stop lighting extra candles. Some felt that if they did, it would break a kind of spiritual commitment, or might suggest that they’ve given up on the freed hostages who will continue to have mental and physical challenges. Some referred to a passage from Talmud (Shabbat 21b) that extends the metaphor of the Hanukkah candles to suggest that someone should always add light, not subtract.
By contrast, the comic Periel Aschenbrand wrote that she was eager to take off the button that she’d been wearing in solidarity with Omri Miran, a hostage abducted in front of his wife and two children on Oct. 7. “I can’t wait to be able to take it off tomorrow, and for Omri to be reunited with his daughters and family,” she wrote Sunday on Instagram.
Alyssa Goldwater, an Orthodox influencer, wrote that she too is “really looking forward” to taking off the yellow ribbon pin she’s worn over the past two years, but that removing doesn’t mean forgetting.
“When you remove a pin, the tiny holes never fully go away,” she wrote on Instagram. “They will remain and serve as a reminder that we will never forget what has happened to us over the last two years. We will never forget who stood by us and who stood soundly or against us. The holes will be tiny because we pray that the hostages will be able to eventually heal and live their regular lives again, where the unimaginable travesties they’ve been through won’t even be noticeable in the human eye, but the holes will remain, because this is a part of us now.”
Long before Oct. 7 led to a torrent of new practices, Jews altered their prayers and rituals in tune with current events, with some changes handed down from rabbis and others bubbling up from the “folk.”
Some changes stick — like the Av HaRachamim memorial prayer, composed in the Middle Ages for those who perished in the Crusades — and others fall away. In the 1970s and ’80s boys and girls celebrating their b’nai mitzvah “twinned” with Soviet Jews unable to emigrate. Adults wore silver bracelets with the name of these refuseniks, and put them away when the emigration restrictions fell.
The additions and changes that persist usually speak to other events, the way Av HaRachamim has become a weekly reminder of various Jewish tragedies. In general, however, a prayer or ritual that responds to current events “should have a theoretical timestamp for when it exits stage left, even if we cannot always know when that time will come,” Rabbi Ethan Tucker, president and rosh yeshiva of Hadar, explained in a Facebook post discussing the transition away from Oct. 7 practices. “Without that foresight and planning, the addition either straggles on, eventually becoming a kind of exhibit in the gallery of prayer, or it simply fades away when monotony and detachment have gotten the better of it.”
How did you, your synagogue ior Jewish institution mark the release of the hostages? Drop us a line at newsdesk@jta.org.
The Jewish calendar itself seemed to conspire in the spiritual turbulence of many Jews: The hostage release came on the eve of Israelis’ celebration of Simchat Torah — and the second anniversary, on the Hebrew calendar, of the Hamas attacks.
The holiday is meant to be a day of unbridled joy. A centerpiece of Simchat Torah is the hakafah, when congregants dance with and around the Torah scrolls
Last year, congregations struggled with how to match the happy themes of the holiday with the one-year anniversary of the worst attack in Israel’s history. Olitzky said his congregation began last year’s Simchat Torah festivities with a “solemn” hakafah, where congregants sang Israel’s national anthem and a somber Hebrew song while standing still. Olitzky said he took solace at the time in the words of Goldberg-Polin, who said, “’There is a time to sob and a time to dance’ and we have to do both right now.”
And while the release of the hostages is also tinged with sadness — for the lost years, the captives who didn’t make it, the suffering still to come — many will use the holiday as a celebration of deliverance and gratitude.
The release of the hostages, Olitzky said, will “allow Simchat Torah to be that — the holiday when we are supposed to have so much joy. Last year it was difficult to find that joy on Simchat Torah. I truly believe that we will have a greater opportunity in the days ahead to sing and dance.”
Adat Shalom, a Reconstructionist synagogue in Bethesda, Maryland, will use Simchat Torah to celebrate the hostages’ return by ending another common practice since Oct. 7: a chair left empty on the synagogue’s bima, featuring the image of a missing hostage.
During the dancing on Simchat Torah, marked on Tuesday night outside of Israel, the congregation will bring the chair and use it to lift up members wedding-style. “We have a lot of people in the community who are really close with the Hostages and Missing Families Forum in Washington,” said Rabbi Scott Perlo. “We’re going to take that very chair, and take it from its depths and lift it up, and make it the centerpiece of our joy.”
Adat Shalom rotated in a number of special prayers and readings over the past two years, acknowledging, Perlo said ruefully, that “there’s so much to pray for,” including “the hostages, the safety of our family in Israel, the safety of people in Gaza,” and the state of American democracy.
He understands that some congregants may be wary of letting go of the new rites and prayers — perhaps afraid that if they don’t keep up the tradition, the horrors that prompted their prayers will only return.
“So what I would say to them is some version of, ‘Yes, don’t let it go completely, but let it transform into something new,’” said Perlo.
Rabbi Felipe Goodman of Temple Beth Sholom in Las Vegas, Nevada also plans to incorporate a ritual of release and transformation during Simchat Torah celebrations on Tuesday night. He’s asking congregants to bring their yellow pins and dog tags and place them on an heirloom Torah cover. “This cover will be dedicated as a memorial and displayed at the entrance of our Temple, so that every time we walk through through Our Temple’s doors, we will remember what happened on Oct. 7, 2023,” he wrote in a message to members.
On Sunday, Hanna Yerushalmi, a rabbi based in Annapolis, Maryland, shared a poem on Instagram, called “Yellow Chairs” that imagined a near future in which hope will transform the fraught symbols of Oct. 7 grief and remembrance. It reads in part:
Empty chairs will be
saved for friends arriving late,
and tape will be
tape again,
and hostage necklaces
will be put away, forgotten in drawers.
and Saturday night will be date night once again.
The post Jews let go of hostage rituals with gratitude and grief appeared first on The Forward.
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More Democrats than ever are voting against aid to Israel. That could actually be good for Israel
Israel is losing Democratic support in the same way a character in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises went bankrupt: “gradually and then suddenly.”
When 103 House Democrats voted for a resolution that would eliminate United States aid to Israel yesterday — that was the “suddenly.” Even though the resolution didn’t pass, what seemed unimaginable on a few years ago now, after a period of gradual change, looks inevitable. When the current $38-billion weapons aid agreement between the U.S. and Israel winds down in 2028, the next one will involve what House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called “a major reset” in the relationship.
And you know what? It’s long overdue. This shocking, historic vote is an opportunity to redefine the U.S.-Israel relationship in a way that benefits the U.S., Israel, Palestinians and the region.
Proponents have always framed U.S. aid to Israel as a win-win. We give them money — most of which has to be spent on American-made weapons — and in exchange Israel serves as a kind of land-based battleship in the Middle East. It looks out for American interests in a volatile region.
But increasingly, Americans are failing to see the value in that bargain. A recent poll found that 48% of Americans feel the U.S. is too supportive of Israel. At least among young people, this antipathy doesn’t just exist on the left: 53% of Republicans under age 45 oppose renewing the current aid agreement.
The fact of Israel’s booming economy, driven by the high tech and weapons industries that make it a valuable U.S. partner, has fueled that opposition. Why, a growing number of Americans ask, should our tax dollars fund a country that ranks 24th in median adult wealth according to a newly released USB survey — while the U.S. itself ranks 28th?
But what opponents mostly object to is Israeli government policy under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has cashed American checks and carried on with policies in Gaza and the West Bank that most Americans — including most American Jews — reject. What defenders have long asserted is a mutually beneficial arrangement increasingly feels more like a teenager with a credit card and a bad attitude.
A better approach, the “reset” Jeffries speaks of, would adjust the relationship from one of parent and child to one of peers and partners.
Ensuring Israel’s long term security would continue to be a key goal of that partnership. The U.S. might stop funding Israeli weapons purchases, but it could still sell Israel defensive systems.
But the security of Palestinians and other Israeli neighbors would also be key. The U.S. ought to consider defense guarantees to Israel and certain neighbors, including the Gulf States and even, perhaps, a reformed Syria. Those guarantees should come with sanctions if any government misuses American-made weapons. Security also means funding humanitarian aid that is attached to rooting out extremism and promoting freedom and self-determination.
Such a reset could make Israel itself stronger: less reliant on the whims of U.S. foreign and domestic policy; better able to diversify its sourcing and sale of weapons; and a key player in a regional peace, which includes the Palestinians. All of those changes could help bring true security.
These outcomes may seem aspirational. But it’s not like the old and now defunct patterns of aid were bringing Israelis the security they need. Democrats and Republicans, by listening to changing public opinion, have a chance to establish a new relationship rooted in a new vision.
Make no mistake, this vision will not satisfy the hardcore anti-Israel crowd on either side of the aisle. They want no aid and no partnership. They want to boycott Israeli products, artists and academics and arrest Israeli leaders. Their solution is the dissolution of the Israeli state.
Some of the Democrats who voted for the resolution no doubt belong in this category — among them the bill’s sponsor, Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, who was the sole House member to vote “nay” on a Nov. 2023 resolution affirming Israel’s right to exist.
But many Democrats who voted for the Wednesday resolution said they did so despite their ongoing support for Israel, as a way to lodge their dissatisfaction with Netanyahu’s policies.
“We simply cannot continue to condone Netanyahu’s actions that are against our moral conscience and our own national security interests by perpetuating the status quo,” said Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, who has a long record of support for Israel.
Rep. Jake Auchincloss, also of Massachusetts, voted for the bill, but said it “should not impair the state of Israel’s right to defend itself against the atrocities of the terrorist regimes that threaten it.”
Both Auchincloss and Moulton pointed out the bill’s flaws, among them that it would deny Israel purely defensive weapons systems, as well as humanitarian aid that also serves Palestinians.
But if Israel’s sensible supporters can, once the current agreement expires, put one in place that allows for defensive weapons and humanitarian aid, they’ll be on the way to promoting a more effective partnership than that we have now. Doing so could dampen the extremes both here and in Israel. It could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
The post More Democrats than ever are voting against aid to Israel. That could actually be good for Israel appeared first on The Forward.
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The quiet wave of Arab emigration from Israel: ‘Every day felt like I was on trial to prove I was a good citizen’
This article was produced through a collaboration between Shomrim, an investigative outlet, and Wasla, an Arabic-language business news site, and was published on both platforms.
More than 207,000 Israelis left the country between 2023 and 2025. Arab citizens account for only a small share of those emigrants: 6.2% in 2024, lower than their share in the population. But surveys from the past 12 months forecast a change: between 20% and 30% of Arab citizens say that they are considering leaving Israel.
Increasingly, Arab families, including many with established careers, are choosing to build new lives abroad. Their reasons go well beyond economics: they cite fears of future wars, a surge in organized crime and deadly violence within Israel’s Arab communities, and a growing sense that they no longer belong.
Dr. Nasreen Haj-Yahya, a social and family researcher who is also a couples and family therapist, says that the fact that more families are even talking about the possibility of leaving the country shows that a change has taken place. “Arab families in Israel are not migrant families by nature,” she says. On the contrary: one of their defining characteristics is that they stay on their land, close to their extended families and to the places they grew up. “Physical and geographical proximity to the family is part of our social structure,” she explains.
According to Haj-Yahya, when families buy a one-way ticket, it is a response to extreme pressure. “It’s not something that fits in with the structure of the Arab family. For a family to get up and leave, there must have been very extreme forces at work.”
These forces are not primarily economic. Haj-Yahya explains that the question of emigration has become a key issue among the families she sees at her clinic and encounters in her research. “The war created a lot of uncertainty, fear and a kind of hopelessness,” she says. “At the same time, violence within Arab society is no longer perceived as something that only affects people involved in criminal activities. Violence is also visited on innocent people, making people fear for their very existence.”
There is also a sense of being silenced. Members of a young and educated generation, who were raised on values like freedom of expression and human rights, found themselves, in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks, afraid to speak their minds. “People feel as if their mouths have been shut. The possibility of living somewhere where they can speak freely and feel safe has become one of the main reasons for emigration.”
Haitham Khalaila, 53, married with one child, from Shefa-Amr, an Arab city in Northern Israel. Returned to Israel from the United States in 2008 and emigrated back to Michigan in 2024
Khalaila decided to leave for the United States again after seeing the psychological effect of the war on his 10-year-old son. “When the war started, I felt completely helpless to protect my son, who was 10 at the time. Every time the siren went off, we’d run for cover, but we didn’t have a bomb shelter near our house. I felt like I couldn’t even give my family the bare minimum of a sense of security. My son refused to sleep alone and kept asking me, ‘Who’s going to raise me if you guys die in the war?’ Those questions are what made up my mind. I realized the fear had already scarred him.”
At first, his wife was very resistant to the idea of moving away from Israel. “She was really hesitant. She doesn’t speak English, she has no family here, and the move terrified her. But as the war dragged on, she realized we had to do it to save our kid.
“The beginning was incredibly expensive. We had huge expenses for lawyers and sorting out my wife’s legal status, and we bought a house for $480,000 with a mortgage. Today I’m working as a big-rig truck driver making around $8,000 a month. It’s a fresh start in every sense of the word.
“Even after we got to the U.S., my son would panic at the sound of regular airplanes, thinking they were drones coming to bomb us. Today he’s calmer, more confident, and introduces himself freely as a Palestinian Muslim. For me, that says it all. If the situation back home stays the way it is – with no security, a high cost of living, and no real change — I don’t see a stable future to bring my family back to. I have no intention of going back.”
Noura Amouri, 43, married with two children from I’billin, a local municipality in northern Israel. A former occupational therapist for the Ministry of Education and a clinic owner, she emigrated with her family to the town of Varallo in Italy
You lived a stable life — professionally and economically. What caused a family like yours to pack up everything and leave?
“It was never about work or money. The decision started to form because of this constant, lingering fear for the future, and especially the violence that keeps getting worse within Arab society. I felt like my kids were growing up in an environment that didn’t give them real opportunities or any sense of security. When you realize you can’t even protect your children’s mental well-being — the clinic, the pharmacy and the house all lose their value.
“Because of a delay with my husband’s work visa, we moved temporarily to Canada for two months. We burned through about 100,000 shekels [about $33,000] there on housing, paperwork and living expenses. That amount would have lasted us a whole year in Italy. Today we’re living on my husband’s income as a pharmacist and on our savings. I’m trying to get my degree recognized so I can get back to work.
“For the first time, I see my kids living a calm, freer life. They play outside, walk around and just feel safe. That alone tells me we made the right choice. But the truth is, homesickness never leaves you. The little details of our old house haunt me even here. I miss my home, the smallest things in it, even the couch I left behind. When you emigrate, you aren’t just leaving a place. You’re leaving a piece of your memory behind.
“As far as we’re concerned, the decision to leave the country is final. There’s no going back. Italy might just be a stepping stone for now and it’s not certain this is where we’ll settle down for good, but the decision not to return home has already been made.”
Rania Laham, 50, married with two children, from Haifa. A VP at a non-profit organization, she moved to Limassol, Cyprus.
Unlike most migration stories, yours unfolded in reverse — you emigrated while your young daughter stayed behind in Israel. How did that shape your life?
“Usually, kids move with their parents. With us, it was the other way around: we left and our daughter stayed behind. For my husband and me, that’s the most painful part of this whole move. My husband, our 16-year-old son and I moved to Cyprus, while our oldest daughter, who is 19, stayed to continue her university studies. It’s a tough situation, but we temporarily sacrificed our life together as a family so we wouldn’t disrupt her education and her future.
“Cyprus wasn’t some long-held dream. It was just the most practical choice: close enough that we can keep a connection to the work and the life we left behind, but it also gives us more peace of mind. The mental toll was a huge factor. We just couldn’t take any more wars and the constant murders and crime within Arab society.
“I’m still working as the deputy director of the I’lam Media Center and the non-profit’s financial manager. I can work remotely without any issue. The fact that I kept the exact same job gave us financial stability and made the move feel less risky, since we didn’t lose our main source of income. It’s true that rent in Limassol is relatively high, because it’s the most expensive city on the island, but daily expenses and food are cheaper than back home.
“I don’t look at this move as a final step, but more like an open-ended experiment that depends on what happens back home. Ultimately, whether we stay here or not depends mostly on my ability to keep working remotely and secure my livelihood.”
Shaden Atiya, 43, married with two children. A pharmacist from Jerusalem, she moved to Barcelona
When did you decide you’d had enough of life in Israel?
“I spent many years living between Jerusalem and Beit Jala. Our lives revolved around daily commutes, checkpoints and closures. My husband’s work in the hotel industry took a hit time and time again — first during COVID and then with the war. At first, we thought about moving mostly for financial reasons, because housing prices in Jerusalem made buying a home almost impossible. But after the war in Gaza, the move became a mental and political necessity. I felt like we just had to have a fresh start, away from the suffocating atmosphere and the uncertainty.
“Today, in Barcelona, for the first time I feel like I can freely and calmly define myself as a Palestinian. I’m no longer living with the constant tension and stress that followed me for years. The fact that we have relatives here was a major factor, and we also felt that Spanish society is close to Arab society in certain ways — in social relationships, the weather and the lifestyle. The beginning wasn’t easy. The paperwork took nearly two years and cost us close to 100,000 euros [about $114,000] out of our savings. We also had to learn both Spanish and Catalan. Today I’m working part-time as a pharmacist alongside an independent project I’m developing and my husband works in marketing for a medical equipment company while also doing some remote work.”
What is your work environment like now compared to how it was in Israel?
“I had a really hard time adapting to working with Israelis. More than once, I felt discrimination and racism because of my Palestinian identity. I tried to find Palestinian workplaces, but the wage gaps pushed me to work in Israeli institutions. Here, I’ve completely freed myself from that daily stress.”
Will you ever return home?
“The question of remaining abroad or going home depends entirely on what happens in Israel.”
Wafaa Haj-Yahya, 46 married with two children, from Taibeh, an Arab city in central Israel. A gormer organizational consultant and kindergarten director, she emigrated with her two sons to Dubai
“I first started having thoughts about leaving back in 2014. I was in the hospital right after giving birth to my second son when I heard that the principal of the school where I worked had been murdered. When he was killed, I realized that was it. Something inside of me broke. It left a deep wound and for the first time, I asked myself if I really wanted my kids to grow up in this kind of reality. But at the time, the price of leaving felt impossible: we had a house, I had a stable job as a kindergarten director in a Jewish community, my husband was working too, and the thought of giving everything up and starting over terrified me.
“When I arrived in the Emirates in 2022 with my two sons, I felt a sense of security I’d never known before. I made a quick decision to buy a house there as an investment and a foundation for the future. I paid a down payment of about 200,000 shekels [about $66,7000] and later committed to monthly payments of about 10,000 shekels [$3,300] for 30 months. But the real reason we left was life in Taibeh: our house was broken into five times, I was exposed to murders that deeply affected me and my husband was injured trying to stop one of the thieves. Fear has just become a part of our daily life.
“During the first year of the war, I ran a kindergarten in Kfar Saba with a Jewish staff. I happened to overhear one of the assistants say she hoped Itamar Ben-Gvir would stay in the government so that not a single Arab would be left in the country. Precisely because my relationship with the staff was good, that sentence shook me. It reinforced the feeling that I don’t want my children to live in a place where their very existence is seen as something to be rejected.
“Back home, I constantly felt like I was on a daily trial to prove I was a good citizen. That feeling wore me down and it was only in Dubai that I realized just how exhausted I was. Today I’m planning my future in peace and I have no intention of going back.”
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Thousands of Israelis left after Oct. 7. With Netanyahu on the ballot, they’re booking flights home to vote.
Hours after Israel finally announced the official date for its upcoming elections last weekend, Israeli expats flooded social media with photos of the airline tickets they purchased to fly home and cast their ballots at the end of October.
Israel is one of the few democracies that do not allow citizens living abroad to cast absentee ballots. That leaves an estimated 500,000 Israelis overseas and eligible to vote with a choice: spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to fly to Israel, or sit out a consequential election that will decide whether Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud Party hold on to power.
The vote will be the first since the Oct. 7 attacks and comes after nearly three years of war, during which a surge in emigration has left an unusually large share of eligible Israeli voters living overseas. Even from thousands of miles away, Israeli expats say they have become representatives of the country and often targets of the conflict’s fallout — giving them extra motivation to help decide their nation’s future.
“Israel is at stake right now,” said Josh Drill, a social activist who hopes his vote will help unseat Netanyahu. Drill left Israel temporarily to pursue a master’s degree at Columbia University. “My wife and I, and also our broader circles, are doing everything in our power to be in Israel for election day.”
To help Israelis return, the AID Coalition, a U.S. based nonprofit organization, launched an initiative called FLY&VOTE to help expats search for flights within their budgets and navigate travel logistics. They also plan to charter flights to the country, with passengers paying their own way.
“We’re not creating voters; we’re removing logistical and informational barriers,” said Batell Blaish-Sultanik, the AID Coalition’s executive director.
Earlier this year, the AID Coalition surveyed roughly 4,500 Israelis living abroad and found that 84% viewed the coming election as one of the most important in Israel’s history. Seventy-three percent said they wanted to return to vote, while 45% said they would do whatever it took to exercise that right.
In the 36 hours after the election date was announced, Blaish-Sultanik says, more than 5,000 additional people registered with FLY&VOTE, bringing the total number of registrants to more than 25,000. The AID Coalition’s goal is to help 50,000 Israelis return to cast ballots.
“If we can’t bring the election to them,” Blaish-Sultanik said, “we’ll bring them to the election.”
Their urgency is heightened by the sheer number of Israelis now living elsewhere, with the number leaving the country in 2024 and 2025 about double previous annual numbers. Last year, 70,000 Israelis departed, with about half heading to North America. Many cited dissatisfaction with the Netanyahu government and the difficulties of living in a country at war.
According to demographer Uzi Rebhun, chair of diaspora relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, those who move abroad do not represent the average Israeli. They are disproportionately young, highly educated and secular. Rebhun says that based on these demographic characteristics, many are likely centrist voters.
But the AID Coalition is adamant that it supports any Israeli who wants to cast their ballot, regardless of political affiliation. “We don’t pick a side; we back the right to vote,” said Blaish-Sultanik.
Who gets to vote?
Beyond the cost of airfare, Israeli voters abroad also face uncertainty over which airlines will actually be flying to Israel. Several foreign carriers have suspended service during the war with Iran, with El Al being one of the few airlines that has operated consistently. A non-stop round trip El Al flight from New York around the time of the election starts at roughly $1,500 and can easily exceed $2,000 depending on travel dates.
But Israeli expats living in the U.S. told the Forward airfare isn’t the only factor that will determine whether they can make the trip.
Some worry Israel could have a second round of elections if no coalition is able to reach 61 seats, as was repeatedly the case during elections from 2019 through 2022. As the polls currently stand, neither the pro-Netanyahu bloc nor the opposition is consistently projected to win a 61-seat majority.
“There is a good chance for a second round of elections,” said Avia Liberman, an Israeli pursuing a master’s degree in public policy at Yale who plans to return to Israel after graduation to work in the public sector. “So am I spending my money now and then not affecting the next one? Am I putting my bet on the next election? Those might be during winter break, and then it will be easier to go back.”
Others cited the difficulty of taking significant time away from work or school.
For families, another challenge presents itself.
Assaf Wolff, a 45-year-old father of three who moved to New Jersey five years ago, said that while he and his wife are both Israeli citizens, only he plans to make the trip.
“There is an issue in the community because if both parents want to come to vote and they have young children, at least one person has to stay behind,” he said.
Debate about diaspora
Whether Israelis should be able to vote from abroad has long been a contentious question, with some Israelis believing that those who no longer bear the direct consequences of their vote, specifically when it comes to Israel’s security situation, should not be allowed to cast a ballot.
According to Ofer Kenig, a research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, one reason Israel does not allow absentee voting is because of the sheer size of its diaspora.
“Because of the Law of Return, citizenship in Israel is acquired very easily. All a Jew needs to do is just arrive in Israel, get a citizenship, and then go back to his home country. And do we want him or her to participate in the elections? I’m not sure,” he said. According to Kenig, similar laws on absentee voting exist for other democracies with large diaspora populations like Greece and Ireland.
Kenig suggests only those Israelis living abroad whose center of life is in Israel should be able to participate in elections. “The day-to-day life here, especially security-wise, makes it extremely unfair for Israelis who never lived here for long, or maybe they lived here for long, but left many years ago, to have an impact on my and my neighbors’ day-to-day lives,” he added.
According to a study done by Kenig, in the 2022 elections, approximately 36,227 votes correlated to one election seat, meaning votes from Israelis living abroad could have a substantial impact on the outcome depending on how many decide to make the trip.
The growing significance of overseas voters seems to have drawn attention from within the government as well. Haaretz reported this week that senior figures at the Transportation Ministry are discussing how to prevent or limit charter flights to Israel like the ones being organized by the AID Coalition.
For Liberman, those critical of expat voters misunderstand the reality for Israelis living abroad, especially after Oct. 7.
“Everything that’s happening in Israel deeply affects the way you experience your life in the U.S. or wherever you are,” he said. “People see us as part of the country, and we are treated as a direct response to what is happening in the Middle East.”
He said Israelis abroad find themselves “affiliated with a country that they may have a complex or distant or close relationship with,” he explained. “But they still, by the forces of life, have to represent it.”
And those who have grown up there, never truly leave Israel behind, observed Blaish-Sulatnik.
“Israelis living abroad, these are people that check Israeli news first thing in the morning. They live Israel in real time, They breathe Israel,” she said. “After Oct. 7, they do advocacy for Israel.”
Nir Paz, a 52-year-old who moved to the U.S. 16 years ago, told the Forward that even though he has not lived in Israel for years, he plans to cast his ballot. He too intends to vote for the opposition.
“The events of October 7 and everything that has followed have profoundly affected not only Israelis living in Israel but also Jewish communities around the world. The decisions made by Israel’s leadership have far-reaching consequences for all of us.”
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