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The case for Jewish optimism in 2026
Jewish history is a spin cycle of darkness and disaster. Wait long enough and trouble will come around.
Predicting doom and gloom for the Jewish people is about as shocking as an Los Angeles weather reporter forecasting hot summers and mild winters.
What’s more surprising: the Prophets we study hedged their warnings with hope. If the people followed the correct path — if they, so to speak, did the work — God would come through. Isaiah, for instance, ended a jeremiad about the ills that might afflict the Jews with a vision of a brighter future: “While you have been forsaken and hated,” he said, “I will make you an eternal excellence, a joy of many generations.”
In that spirit, here are my reasons for Jewish optimism in the coming year:
1. The Gaza ceasefire is still tenuous, but holding
We enter 2026 with something that seemed far off in January 2025: the return of all but one of the hostages amid a ceasefire after two years of war. (The remains of Ran Gvili are still in Gaza.)
Neither Israel nor Hamas appears particularly eager to make the sacrifices necessary to proceed to the second phase of the ceasefire, which would involve Hamas disarmament, further Israeli withdrawal and the deployment of an international peacekeeping force. But successful Mideast diplomacy has always depended on American engagement, and judging by the meeting this week in Florida between President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the American president is still engaged.
Trump’s pressure and leverage, especially with Turkey and Qatar, who have sway over Hamas, could help push the sides toward the next step.
Success would increase the likelihood of a Saudi-Israeli accord, which would be a true Middle East game changer.
“A deal with Saudi Arabia could remake the Middle East and Israel’s place in it,” former diplomat Nimrod Novik recently told The New York Times. “Saudi Arabia doesn’t come alone. It’s a whole list of countries that follow, once the Saudis put a kosher stamp on Israel: Indonesia, Malaysia, maybe even Kuwait and Oman — who knows?”
2. In Israel, a grassroots awakening
A new generation of grassroots Israeli movements and leaders has emerged since the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023.
Now, they may help reshape Israel’s political landscape. New centrist parties like Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar and Yoav Hendel’s Reservist Party have emerged to challenge Netanyahu’s divisive leadership. Two weeks ago, Einav Zangauker, who protested daily for the release of the hostages, among them her son Matan Zangauker, said she may enter electoral politics.
And while election polls still show that Israel suffers from deep social and political rifts, one finding of a recent Israel Democracy Institute survey gives me hope: 71% of Israelis say “it’s important for Israel to have a Constitution” — a document the country has lacked since its founding.
“The biggest threat to long-term stability in Israel,” wrote the institute’s founder, Arye Carmon, “is the lack of a national constitution to provide a foundation on which to guarantee stability and define Jewishness in the ‘Jewish and Democratic.’”
As religious, tribal and political forces pull the country apart, it’s hopeful that a consensus exists to keep it together.
3. In the United States, a continuing Jewish revitalization
The post-Oct. 7 surge that has brought American Jews deeper into Jewish life shows no sign of ebbing in 2026. Synagogue, camp and day school enrollments are up, as is Jewish involvement across the board. A recent national survey found that 72% of people who became more deeply engaged in Jewish life after Hamas’ 2023 attack are “still engaging more today through community, learning and personal relationships.”
At a time when Americans are suffering from an epidemic of over-digitized isolation, American Jews are seeking and finding actual, real life community.
How that looks can vary wildly: increased donations to Jewish causes, overt displays of pride and belonging, activism, adult b’nai mitzvah classes or a packed Brooklyn “Sinners’ Shabbat” with burlesque dancers and drag queens. In all ways, it’s a resurgence that can only strengthen our identity.
4. The calmer the conflict, the safer our streets
Violent antisemitic attacks have grown in frequency and ferocity in the past six months — witness Washington, D.C., Boulder and Bondi Beach.
But the numbers of overall antisemitic attacks have fallen off. Antisemitic hate crimes fell by more than 50% in New York City in early 2025, reflecting an international decrease and a sharp decline in global antisemitism since post-Oct. 7 highs. That isn’t surprising. “There is no more important factor in explaining variation in antisemitic hate crimes in this country than Israel being engaged in a particularly violent military operation,” said Professor Ayal Feinberg, whose 2019 study looked at the correlation between the 2014 Gaza War and antisemitic violence.
If Hamas and Israel can enter the second ceasefire phase, the world’s anti-Israel demonstraters will be faced with the dissonant reality of Israel working with Arab and Turkish neighbors to rebuild Gaza. I’d like to see the protest signs objecting to that.
5, Jews have allies, and antisemites just have X
I suspect that other noxious forms of antisemitism — like podcaster Tucker Carlson hosting Nazi fanboys, or Candace Owens spouting Jew-hating conspiracy theories — will continue to do more to splinter the Republican party than unite it.
We’ve seen that happening already. Jewish and non-Jewish members of the Heritage Foundation resigned when its director refused to distance himself from Carlson. Ben Shapiro threw a wrench into the Turning Point USA convention by declaring a red line against bigots and Holocaust deniers.
A disturbing number of MAGA leaders equivocated — here’s looking at you, Vice President JD Vance — but others like Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw and Sen. Ted Cruz spoke against the hatemongers.
The not-so-coded antisemitism that many of us have long warned infests MAGA, and that Trump has long both denied and winked at, is now out in the sunlight, which, counterintuitively, may not be a bad thing. For Jewish Republicans, it’s clarifying to know where their so-called friends stand, and who their real allies are.
And while X and Discord may be a safe space for antisemites, American themselves have historically proven to be less accepting of the oldest hatred. Let’s hope — actively — it stays that way.
Granted, these five points come with caveats. The contrary voices in my head are loud: Hamas or Israel could sabotage the ceasefire. Iran and Israel could renew hostilities. Tucker Carlson could become a future President J.D. Vance’s Secretary of State. A.I. could unleash a flood of hate bots and deep fakes that will swarm common sense. Like I said, the safe money is on doom.
But when the prophets’ hopeful visions always came with a hitch — a better future depends on what you do now, in the present.
The question isn’t what gives you hope, but what future are you willing to work for?
The post The case for Jewish optimism in 2026 appeared first on The Forward.
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University of Michigan will have a leader who defended pro-Palestinian protesters in court
A civil rights attorney who defended pro-Palestinian protesters in court and made social media posts viewed as pro-Hezbollah and antisemitic, has won his bid for the University of Michigan Board of Regents.
Michigan is one of a few states in which voters play a direct role in choosing university overseers. As a regent, Amir Makled (D) will help oversee expenditures at the university where his clients, the student protesters, were arrested. The position is unpaid and carries an eight-year term. Democrat Paul Brown won the other seat up for election, maintaining the board’s 6-2 Democratic majority.
Makled beat out Republican challenger Lena Epstein, who is Jewish and previously identified as a “Jewish Messianic believer of Christ,” but recanted the statement and later said she was “100% Jewish.” Mainstream Judaism does not accept Messianic Jews because they believe in the divinity of Christ and try to convert Jews to Jesus.
Epstein told the Forward in an April interview that the Democrats had handed her an opportunity to win the seat by endorsing Makled, who was facing intense scrutiny. In one of his controversial posts, Makled called Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah a “martyr” after he was killed by Israeli strikes in 2024. He lost an endorsement from Service Employees International Union for the posts and later deleted them.
In the regents race, voters picked up to two of six candidates, with the top two winning. Makled received 25.6% of the vote while Brown received 27.2%. Epstein received 22.2% while her fellow Republican Michael Schostak received 22.6%.
Makled’s election comes as part of a wave of Democratic Party wins, including in Michigan, which elected as Senator Abdul El-Sayed (D), who also faced severe backlash for statements related to Israel and Gaza and for appearing alongside streamer Hasan Piker, who has been accused of antisemitic rhetoric.
Israel played a major role in the rhetoric surrounding Michigan’s midterms. But voters, including 60% of Jewish voters that voted for El-Sayed according to early exit polls, favored sharp critics of the Jewish state to candidates in support of it.
The post University of Michigan will have a leader who defended pro-Palestinian protesters in court appeared first on The Forward.
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This grandson of Holocaust survivors is headed to Congress. The ADL has concerns about his antisemitism record.
The election of Daniel Biss, a Jewish critic of Israel, to an Illinois congressional seat Tuesday has sparked a public feud between the Anti-Defamation League and the liberal Zionist group J Street over whether the ADL remains a credible voice in the fight against antisemitism.
After Biss, the former Jewish mayor of Evanston, Ill., won his seat Tuesday night, the ADL Midwest took to social media to express “serious concerns” about Biss’ “approach to antisemitism.”
J Street, which had endorsed Biss, hit back, noting that Biss is the grandson of Holocaust survivors and calling the ADL’s statement “a shanda,” the Yiddish word for disgrace.
“It is hard to read this statement without wondering how far the ADL has drifted from the organization it once was – a gold standard in our community for standing up against bigotry, hatred and discrimination,” J street wrote on X.
Biss, who speaks Hebrew and spent childhood summers in Israel, was elected with 75% of the vote in a district where 11% of the electorate is Jewish.
“It saddens me to watch the ADL, once a preeminent civil rights organization, devolve into an entity that traffics in fear, intimidation and extremism,” Biss wrote in a statement to the Forward. “This kind of rhetoric does nothing to keep the Jewish people safe—in fact, it undermines that very cause.”
The ADL has long faced scrutiny from critics who view the watchdog group as labeling too broad a swath of Israel criticism as antisemitic, while less forcefully condemning antisemitism when it comes from the political right.
“Our statement speaks for itself,” an ADL spokesperson wrote in an email to the Forward.
In its statement, the ADL pointed to a specific set of concerns involving Biss’ record as mayor of Evanston, Illinois, the college town home to Northwestern University.
Biss did not provide Evanston police support that Northwestern requested after reported “antisemitic conduct” at the Gaza war encampment on campus in April 2024, the ADL said, “raising serious questions about whether the safety, dignity, and equal access of Jewish students were treated with the urgency they required.”
Biss has defended his decision not to dispatch police to the encampment, writing in response to a congressional inquiry that forcibly clearing the protest would have gone against police department advice and suppressed “constitutionally protected speech.”
The ADL also said that Biss “dismissed scrutiny of his response as a politically motivated attack fueled by AIPAC, rather than substantively addressing the concerns raised by Jewish students and community members.”
Biss made opposition to AIPAC a central theme of his primary campaign for Congress after the hardline pro-Israel lobbying group spent millions opposing him and supporting another candidate, state Sen. Laura Fine.
In an interview with the Forward in March, Biss said it was “absurd” that AIPAC opposes imposing any conditions on U.S. military aid to Israel. “And then try to enforce it with millions of dollars of dark money, is certainly bad for democracy and bad for our politics here in America,” Biss added.
At the same time, Biss faced pressure to his left on Israel in the primary, defeating Kat Abughazaleh, a Palestinian-American who has characterized Israel’s conduct in Gaza as a genocide. Biss, who has described himself as a progressive Zionist, declined to use the word genocide, despite repeated calls from Abughazaleh to do so.
In a March op-ed in The Nation, Biss wrote that he believed he was one of AIPAC’s top targets partly because “I’m the grandson of Holocaust survivors. My mother is Israeli. My extended family lives in Israel. AIPAC knew that they couldn’t dismiss me as anti-Israel or antisemitic.”
The ADL also criticized Biss for supporting the repeal of an anti-BDS law, which bars Illinois from investing public pension funds in companies that boycott Israel. That position, the ADL said, “raises additional concerns about his willingness to stand against efforts to isolate and delegitimize the Jewish state.”
In an April Substack post explaining his position, Biss said that he personally opposes the global movement to boycott Israel, but he does not believe the government should “stop people from using their economic agency to advocate for their values.”
Biss will succeed Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a Jewish lawmaker who represented the district for nearly three decades and was also an outspoken critic of AIPAC.
The post This grandson of Holocaust survivors is headed to Congress. The ADL has concerns about his antisemitism record. appeared first on The Forward.
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At the Vatican, two elderly men — one Jewish, one Catholic — exchange gifts and mutual admiration
On Wednesday, two senior citizens, Robert Zimmerman, 85, a Jew originally from Minnesota, and Robert Prevost, 71, a Catholic of Chicago, had a brief meeting at the younger man’s office in central Italy.
Sources on the scene report that Zimmerman was in town for business and Prevost, who goes professionally by Leo, had recently cited Zimmerman’s work in the preface to a book about nuclear disarmament.
Both men dressed in uniform, looking a bit Spy Vs. Spy, with Zimmerman in a black hoodie and Prevost in white with a small white skull cap. The confab was brief, a bulletin from Prevost’s workplace reported, consisting of “greetings and a few lighthearted exchanges.”
Prevost gifted Zimmerman with prayer beads, and Zimmerman presented Prevost with a copy of his memoir, published under his pen name, Bob Dylan.
While Zimmerman was raised in a Jewish home, he had, for a time in the late 1970s to early 1980s, converted to born-again Christianity, confounding many.
The post At the Vatican, two elderly men — one Jewish, one Catholic — exchange gifts and mutual admiration appeared first on The Forward.
