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Learning Hebrew brought me closer to Judaism — and alienated me from Israel
(JTA) — Speaking to the media in the United States before and after his latest election as Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu reassured American Jews and other supporters of Israel that their widely expressed fears of the undemocratic nature of the new Israeli governing coalition were overblown and would not in fact come to pass.
Netanyahu told the New York Times that he was still at least notionally committed to a peace deal with the Palestinians and told journalist Bari Weiss that policy would be determined by him, and not cabinet ministers like the self-described “proud homophobe” Bezalel Smotrich and convicted criminal Itamar Ben-Gvir, or the haredi Orthodox parties.
Then he returned to Israel, and promptly tweeted, “These are the basic lines of the national government headed by me: The Jewish people have an exclusive and indisputable right to all areas of the Land of Israel. The government will promote and develop settlement in all parts of the Land of Israel — in the Galilee, the Negev, the Golan, Judea and Samaria.” Netanyahu was asserting absolute Jewish sovereignty over the entirety of the West Bank, with no room for Palestinian statehood — as those politicians want and as his many American Jewish critics feared he would do.
That last tweet, despite reflecting the official position of Netanyahu’s newly inaugurated government, did not attract nearly as much attention in U.S. media as Netanyahu’s previous press tour. Because unlike Netanyahu’s fluent English-language interviews with numerous American press organizations, this tweet was in Hebrew — a language in which only 22% of American Jews possess an even minimal degree of fluency.
Like many non-Orthodox American Jews, I was once one of those other 78%. I was brought up attending a Reform synagogue, and I learned how to read enough Hebrew phonetically to have a bar mitzvah ceremony, reciting my Torah portion by rote memorization. I learned the aleph bet, and a few basic words here and there, but not much more. If I read Torah or Talmud at all, it was entirely in English translation.
But unlike many non-Orthodox American Jews, I became interested in learning Hebrew as an adult, as part of a broader interest in learning more about Jewish history, and I enrolled in courses starting in college to study Biblical, Mishnaic and modern Hebrew. Eventually, after years of study, I enrolled in a doctoral program in Jewish history at the University of Chicago, where I had to pass a rigorous Hebrew proficiency exam as a prerequisite to advance to doctoral candidacy status.
In many ways, this should have made me an ideal American Jew. After all, numerous commentators have opined on the need for more American Jews to learn Hebrew, to bring us closer to both Israeli Jewish culture and to Jewish history as a whole. As one Israeli educator stated, “Once you have Hebrew, all Israeli culture can be injected into your life.”
A wide array of American Jewish philanthropists and charities have identified funding Hebrew language education for American Jews as a priority. They should see someone like me — who went from knowing barely enough Hebrew to get through my bar mitzvah to now reading Haaretz each day in Hebrew — as a success story.
Except that this call for more American Jews to learn Hebrew often comes with an embedded political assumption: that if more American Jews learned to read and speak Hebrew, we would feel more closely linked to Israel and reverse the declining support for Israel among young American Jews.
There’s even a claim that American Jews do not have the right to criticize Israel without being able to follow Israeli political discussions in the original language. Daniel Gordis, of Shalem College in Jerusalem, complained that left-wing American Jewish journalist Peter Beinart should not be taken seriously as a commentator on Israeli affairs, as Beinart apparently “cannot read those [Hebrew] newspapers or Israeli literature until it is translated.”
The assumption is clear: If American Jews do not know Hebrew, we cannot be connected to the state of Israel, nor can we truly understand the Israeli politics we might wish to opine about. If we learned Hebrew, one Israeli-American advocate wrote, we would “be more united and support Israel in spectacular ways.”
Except that in my case, the exact opposite happened. As I learned more Hebrew, I saw how Israeli Jewish politicians often spoke in different terms in English and in Hebrew, tailoring their appeals for different audiences. Netanyahu’s recent sojourn to the United States is only one example. Take Ayelet Shaked, who sounded moderate notes to English-speaking audiences on a trip to Britain, while also telling Hebrew audiences that the “Jewish” character of Israel should supersede the notion of “equality.”
Of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with code-switching. Politicians of all kinds do that. But the fact that some Israeli politicians think they have to sound more moderate in English than in Hebrew is telling. And when I opened myself up to what some Israeli politicians say in Hebrew, such as when Netanyahu falsely spread allegations of Arabs stealing votes in the last Israeli elections, something he did in Hebrew and not in English, or when new coalition partner Itamar Ben-Gvir put up a billboard reading, “May our enemies be gone” in Hebrew next to the pictures of three Israeli left-wing politicians, two Palestinian and one Jewish, it opened my eyes to a lot of aspects of Israeli politics that some American Jews would rather not hear.
So yes, it would be good for more American Jews to learn Hebrew. It would be a positive step for more American Jews to engage more heavily with Jewish culture and history. I certainly have no regrets about my time spent studying Hebrew.
But we should be honest about what the effects of that Hebrew language education would be. It might not be to simply make more American Jews “defend Israel” against its detractors. It might mean a more honest engagement with Israeli politics as they truly are, rather than how they are presented abroad to English-speaking audiences. And for some of us, that might even push us further away.
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The post Learning Hebrew brought me closer to Judaism — and alienated me from Israel appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israeli Christian Leader: Tucker Carlson ‘Doesn’t Want the Truth,’ Endangers Christians Elsewhere by Lying About Israel
Tucker Carlson speaks on first day of AmericaFest 2025 at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona, Dec. 18, 2025. Photo: Charles-McClintock Wilson/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
Firebrand podcaster Tucker Carlson drew a barrage of heat from Israelis after claiming he was “detained and interrogated” during a brief stop at Ben Gurion Airport on Wednesday, with former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett calling him “a chickens**t” and “a phony” and an Israeli Christian leader describing him as “an enemy of Israel” for lying about the country’s treatment of Christians.
Shadi Khalloul, founder of the Israeli Christian Aramaic Association and a former Knesset candidate, accused the former Fox News host-turned-far-right conspiracy theorist of “destroying Christian-Jewish relations” all over the world and “endangering the persecuted Christian community in the Middle East” by portraying Israel as hostile to Christianity.
“The truth is exactly the opposite,” he said, describing Christians in Israel as enjoying freedom and equal opportunity.
In Khalloul’s telling, Carlson is choosing scenes and storylines that travel well online, then skipping the reporting that might complicate them.
“Tucker Carlson doesn’t want the truth. The truth doesn’t exist in his lexicon,” Khalloul told The Algemeiner.
Earlier this month, Khalloul invited Carlson to a tour of Christian communities and holy sites in Israel, including a meeting with his brother-in-law, the head of the Maronite Church of Israel, but received no response.
I invited @TuckerCarlson to take advantage of his upcoming visit to Israel and meet our thriving Christian community – to see with his own eyes the people and realities he speaks about so confidently and so often on his platform.
This letter was sent a week ago to every email… pic.twitter.com/lcBiecCtUx
— Shadi khalloul שאדי ח’לול (@shadikhalloul) February 17, 2026
“If he [Carlson] was really willing to help, he would come interview us, hear our views, our narrative,” Khalloul said, adding the podcaster would then be able to “expose the oppression of Christians in Lebanon, in Iraq, in Syria, and under the Palestinian Authority by a radical Islamic propaganda agenda,” rather than “talking about me and my community as being persecuted by Israel.”
He pointed to anti-Christian violence in Syria, including a recent church bombing in Damascus, and to the arrest of Maronite official Moussa el-Hajj in Lebanon after he was arrested by Hezbollah operatives at the Lebanese border carrying money and medicine sent from Israel’s Christian community.
Christian communities all over the region are continuing “to shrink while we here are thriving and increasing in numbers and happily living in Israel,” Khalloul said.
Khalloul’s comments came after Carlson spent only a few hours in Israel on Wednesday for an interview with US Ambassador Mike Huckabee and chose not to leave the Ben Gurion Airport facility before flying out of the country.
Bennett described the polemical commentator’s visit as a staged drive-by meant to give him a basis for future anti-Israel commentary.
“Tucker Carlson is a chickens**t,” Bennett posted on the social media platform X.
Tucker Carlson is a chickenshit.
The guy who’s been spouting lies about Israel for the past two years,
landed today at Ben Gurion airport,
took a quick picture in the logistics zone,
tweeted it to pretend he’s actually IN Israel (so he can later claim that he’s a serious… https://t.co/ZWZ8aY7BAG— Naftali Bennett נפתלי בנט (@naftalibennett) February 18, 2026
Carlson, who has been “spouting lies about Israel for the past two years,” didn’t even step foot in the country, Bennett wrote, and instead posted a photo taken in the airport logistics zone to “pretend he’s actually IN Israel (so he can later claim that he’s a serious reporter who toured Israel).”
He “whined” and “made up a story that he’s being supposedly harassed by our security (didn’t happen),” he continued.
“Next time he talks about Israel as if he’s some expert, just remember this guy is a phony!” Bennett concluded.
Carlson’s version, carried by outlets including the New York Post and the Daily Mail, said airport security took passports and “hauled” his executive producer into a room and interrogated him about the interview Carlson had just recorded with Huckabee.
Huckabee pushed back publicly, writing on X: “EVERYONE who comes in/out of Israel (every country for that matter) has passports checked & routinely asked security questions.”
Israel’s Airports Authority also rejected Carlson’s account, saying he and his team were not “detained, delayed, or interrogated” and were only asked “a few routine questions” in a side room inside the VIP lounge “solely to protect their privacy.”
“No unusual incident occurred,” the authority said, adding that it “firmly rejects any other claims.”
Carlson’s airport detention story was “another lie” by “someone who is always inventing stories,” according to Khalloul.
Carlson’s own platform promoted the trip as a fact-finding mission. In a monologue titled “We’re headed to Israel. Here’s why,” his site said he was traveling to “get answers to questions that no one will answer.”
His show page also carried an episode billed as “Israel’s Purging of Christians From the Holy Land and the Plot to Keep Americans From Noticing,” part of a series focused on Christian treatment by the “US-funded Israeli government.”
Commentators on social media pointed out that Carlson’s posting “Greetings from Israel” from an airport logistics zone, then flying out, does not amount to visiting the country in any ordinary sense.
Carlson’s brief trip to Israel contrasts with his interview of Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2024, when he spent multiple days in Russia praising the country on video and infamously marveling at the use of locks on shopping carts — a common feature in Europe.
The podcaster’s visit to Israel also differed from his trip to Doha in December, when he interviewed Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani and revealed his plans to purchase a home in the country. Qatar has been a long-time backer of the Muslim Brotherhood, including its Palestinian offshoot Hamas, an internationally designated terrorist group.
Carlson has ramped up his anti-Israel content over the last year, according to a study released in December by the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI), which tracked the prominent far-right podcaster’s disproportionate emphasis on attacking the Jewish state in 2025.
In September, for example, the podcaster appeared to blame the Jewish people for the crucifixion of Jesus and suggest Israel was behind the assassination of American conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
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Israel’s High Court sides with egalitarian prayer advocates in long-running Western Wall dispute
(JTA) — Israel’s highest court has delivered a unanimous rebuke to state and municipal authorities over long-stalled plans to upgrade the Western Wall’s egalitarian prayer section, intensifying a dispute that has come to symbolize broader tensions over religious pluralism in Israel.
In a decision issued Thursday, an expanded seven-justice panel of the High Court of Justice ordered the national government and the Jerusalem Municipality to move forward with building permits needed for repairs and infrastructure improvements at the Ezrat Israel prayer platform, the area designated for mixed-gender and non-Orthodox worship south of the main Western Wall plaza.
The ruling imposes strict procedural deadlines aimed at ending what the justices described as years of exceptional delay following a 2016 deal to permit egalitarian prayer at the holy site. Acceding to pressure from haredi Orthodox politicians, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu froze the deal the following year, triggering a legal petition by Judaism’s Reform and Masorti/Conservative movements, Women of the Wall and Israeli religious pluralism advocacy groups.
Today, the groups say, area remains difficult to access, lacks adequate facilities, and does not provide meaningful proximity to the Wall’s stones — conditions they view as discriminatory toward non-Orthodox worshippers.
“For nine years, the state and the municipality have been dragging their feet and refusing to promote an egalitarian, respectful, and accessible alternative in the Ezrat Israel,” Attorneys Ori Narov and Orly Erez-Likhovski, who represent the Reform Movement in Israel, one of the petitioners, said in a statement to Times of Israel. “Now, the court is ordering an end to the foot-dragging.”
The court did not revisit legal questions surrounding prayer rights at the site, emphasizing that the decision focused on the “practical implementation” of matters already litigated. Instead, the justices targeted bureaucratic obstacles that have repeatedly slowed or blocked construction, particularly disputes involving planning approvals and the Israel Antiquities Authority.
The court ruled that existing government approvals are still valid and that any remaining sign-off from the Antiquities Authority must be decided within 14 days, removing key grounds for further delays. After that, the state must file new building permit requests within 14 days. If officials don’t respond within 45 days, it will count as a rejection and the state must appeal. The state and city must also update the court within 90 days.
The decision arrives amid renewed friction at the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site and a focal point of Israel’s long-running struggle over religious authority. It also comes just one day after Israeli police detained two leaders of Women of the Wall during the group’s monthly Rosh Chodesh prayer service marking a new Jewish month.
The activists were briefly held after conducting a Torah reading near the site. Women of the Wall, which campaigns for expanded women’s prayer rights, has clashed for years with authorities over practices permitted under non-Orthodox traditions but restricted in the gender-segregated main plaza.
Pluralism advocates hailed the court’s intervention as a significant victory, noting both the unanimity of the decision and the ideological diversity of the judicial panel.
“An expanded panel of the Supreme Court, including conservative jurists, has unanimously ruled that the Government of Israel and the Jerusalem Municipality must put an end to their foot dragging and get to work,” said World Zionist Organization Vice Chairman Yizhar Hess, a senior representative of the Masorti/Conservative movement, in a statement.
Hess accused authorities of maintaining an “endless, creative litany of excuses” to block repairs necessary to ensure direct access to the Wall’s stones at the egalitarian platform. “This is a victory for those who believe in Jewish pluralism in Israel and that every Jew from every stream should have the equal opportunity to pray according to their custom at our holiest site,” he said.
The post Israel’s High Court sides with egalitarian prayer advocates in long-running Western Wall dispute appeared first on The Forward.
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Australian Bar Shut Down for Displaying Posters of Netanyahu, Putin, Trump in Nazi-Like Uniforms
Adolf Hitler in Nuremberg in 1938. Photo: Imperial War Museums.
A live music bar and cafe in Australia was shut down by local police on Wednesday for displaying posters that depict world leaders and others, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump, wearing Nazi-like uniforms.
The Dissent Cafe and Bar in Canberra Central said in a Facebook post that ACT Policing, the community policing arm of the Australian Federal Police, shut down the venue for two and a half hours on Wednesday night. Police said they were investigating a complaint about possible hate imagery relating to five posters in the venue’s window display. A scheduled performance at the bar and cafe was also canceled because of the shutdown.
ACT Policing said in a statement on Thursday that it declared the cafe a crime scene and officers would investigate whether there was a breach of new Commonwealth law about hate symbols. Police noted that they asked the venue’s owner to remove the posters and he refused.
“Officers attended the premises and had a discussion with the owner, with officers seeking to remove the posters as part of their investigation into the matter. The owner declined this request and so a crime scene was established,” read the police statement. “Five posters were subsequently seized and will be considered under recently enacted Commonwealth legislation regarding hate symbols.”
The Dissent Cafe and Bar had displayed in its front windows posters depicting Netanyahu, Trump, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, US Vice President JD Vance and Tesla co-founder Elon Musk in Nazi-like uniforms. The posters were created by the artist group Grow Up Art and underneath them were signs in the window that said “Sanction Israel” and “Stop Genocide.” Grow Up Art displayed the same images as part of a billboard poster campaign last summer and they are also sold on t-shirts. The artist group nicknamed the men in the posters collectively as “The Turd Reich,” a play on the Third Reich, the name for the Nazi dictatorship in Germany under Adolf Hitler’s rule.
Dissent Cafe and Bar has defended the artwork, saying it is “clearly and obviously parody art with a distinct anti fascist [sic] message.”
“In what is obviously harassment the ACT police have declared a crime scene at Dissent and tonight’s gig is unfortunately canceled,” Dissent Cafe and Bar wrote on Facebook when the closure happened on Wednesday.
The posters have since been placed back in the windows of the live music bar, but the images are now covered with the word “CENSORED” in red. ACT Policing said on Thursday they are still investigating the posters and are also “seeking legal advice on their legality.”
“ACT Policing remains committed to ensuring that alleged antisemitic, racist, and hate incidents are addressed promptly and thoroughly, and when possible criminality is identified, ACT Policing will not hesitate to take appropriate action,” police added.