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This Jewish art looks pretty Christian, and vice versa. Is this coexistence or antisemitism?
As you walk into Sacred Splendors, the new exhibit at the Jewish Museum in Manhattan, you’re greeted by a miniature city of Gothic castles.
Silver spires rise from small bessamim boxes, the containers used to hold spices for the Jewish ritual of havdalah at the end of Shabbat; each scent holder is shaped into a tiny, filigreed building. Behind the village of bessamim boxes rises a great golden cathedral. This one was meant to hold the sacred host, the bread used in Catholic masses as part of the Eucharist, believed to become the body and blood of Jesus during the ritual.
At first, it may seem surprising that these two totally disparate religious objects, serving communities that lived separately — Jews were confined to a ghetto in Prague — seem so similar.
The reason for the objects’ similarity has little to do with shared theology or social circles. It’s simple: Many of them were made by the same artisans. Because Jews were not allowed to join artisan guilds, they turned to Christian silversmiths and artisans to create their bessamim boxes. And those craftsmen created what they knew best: church-inspired miniatures. (The golden tabernacle to hold the sacred host was such a perfect model of the unfinished St. Vitus Cathedral that it was used as a reference for the church’s construction.)
But the impacts of this shared aesthetic also shaped Christian visual language. In an ornate mahzor, a holiday prayerbook, letters are adorned in the style of illuminated Christian manuscripts with four creatures — a human, a lion, an ox and an eagle — referencing Ezekiel’s description of God’s throne. Displayed next to it is a Christian Bible that uses the same four creatures to represent the Four Evangelists, adopting the Jewish symbolism to a new meaning.
Sacred Splendors brings together ritual objects from Judaism and Christianity. Side by side, it’s possible to not only see their similarities but also to examine the internal contradictions behind this shared history, showcasing how Christian iconography and rituals worked to denigrate and eradicate Judaism, even as it venerated pieces of it — often literally. It’s a pattern that has resonances in the politics of American Christians toward Jews and Israel today.
The exhibit focuses in particular on Christian reliquaries — the often heavily-adorned objects used to house, protect and idolize pieces of holy objects, usually bone shards believed to belong to Catholic saints. These reliquaries were placed in churches where attendees could come to physically commune with saints, internalizing and experiencing the story of Christianity when many were illiterate — the relics are sometimes encased in a gilded model of the body part they contain, such as an arm bone of Saint George housed in a bejeweled golden arm that looks like a piece of decorative armor, helping communicate their contents in a visual language.
Under the reign of Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, who wished to turn Prague into a “New Jerusalem,” Saint Vitus Cathedral became a storied home for these relics as a way to achieve that vision with artifacts often brought back to Europe from the Crusades. And among the bits of saints both famous and obscure that he gathered are a few Jewish names: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
The Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, in Hebron — where it still stands today, in a heavily militarized area between the Palestinian city and its small Jewish settlement — were taken over by Christian armies during the Crusades. A few relics from Holy Land and the Jewish Patriarchs were enclosed in gilded containers and brought back to the St. Vitus Cathedral to be idolized as Christian reliquaries.
The Patriarchs were key to Christianity in the era, as their Judaism affirmed Christianity’s ancient roots, authenticity and authority. But the story isn’t simply one of tracing ancestors; a shard of what was purportedly Moses’ staff is displayed alongside another relic containing a piece of Saint Peter’s staff to communicate the message that the Church inherited that authority. Saint Peter leading early Christians takes the place of Moses leading early Jews.
In short, much of the inclusion of Judaism was meant to communicate and center the idea of supersessionism, a Christian theological idea that Christianity has taken the place of Judaism in covenant with God, fulfilling and superseding its laws.
Supersessionism is also behind another central bit of Christian ritual art: Ecclesia and Synagoga, personifications of the Church and Judaism, respectively. In manuscripts and sculptures, Ecclesia stands tall, crowned and triumphant; Synagoga is always depicted blindfolded, slumping to the side, eyes downcast, with stone tablets — representing the ten commandments — falling out of her hands. Even as the Church’s art emphasized Christianity’s Jewish roots as a source of authority, it often depicted the weak and defeated nature of Judaism nearby to communicate to a largely illiterate populace that Judaism was a lesser, subordinated religion. And this message was so effective that the image triggered, at times, persecutions of Jews.
This antagonism showcased in the art and relics, however, didn’t last forever; Sacred Splendors, having detailed Jewish persecution during the Black Death, ends with rich tapestries and sumptuous books from a later period of Jewish flourishing in the Holy Roman Empire, under Rudolf II, who was notably tolerant of Judaism.
Now able to make their own ritual art, and perhaps grateful for their renewed place in society, Jews adopted Christian art more readily. In one Haggadah from this time, a kiddush cup in an illustration was originally topped by a cross, though the copy on display has removed the Christian element. In another, cherubim that would look at home in an Raphael oil painting flit about the edges of a prayerbook — though their faces have been scratched out, which the exhibit text hypothesizes was done by its owner, perhaps uncomfortable with Christian aesthetics infiltrating their Jewish prayers.
This uncomfortable interplay between acceptance of Jews, and Jewish embrace of Christian aesthetics mirrors so much of assimilation throughout history.
Today, evangelical groups are engaging with Judaism with renewed fascination. This can be seen in the proliferation of shows like The Chosen, Amazon’s House of David or the new movie David and the Fiery Furnace, as well as churches and pastors incorporating Jewish ritual objects like shofars and tallitot. There are so many Christian Zionists that they outnumber the world’s entire Jewish population. But just as in medieval Prague, this interest is not benevolent; it has little to do with respect for Judaism and more to do with Christian desires to absorb and reinterpret Jewish beliefs and rituals as part of Christianity to reinforce their own religious authority and authenticity.
It’s supersessionism, the same as the Christianity centuries ago. Even if few viewers of The Chosen would recognize Ecclesia and Synagoga today, their legacies are alive and well.
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These Bundist pioneers were heroes in their time. Would they be in ours?
Academic stars in high school, Abrasha Blum and Luba Bielecka shared a slow burn romance and fervor for radical change. That hardly set them apart amid the ferment after the tsarist empire crumbled in 1919. No one would have predicted that Bielecka would go on to be awarded global nursing’s highest honor and Blum Poland’s equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor.
But their story poses a provocation in today’s hyper-polarized politics: Blum and Bielecka were devoted Bundists, and as such, they were not only socialists but anti-Zionists.
That combination can get you labeled today as anti-Israel and antisemitic, and even anti-American. Yet at the time they were Jewish heroes.
Bielecka repeatedly risked her life smuggling children out the Warsaw ghetto under Nazi occupation while directing the sole Jewish nursing school, sustaining its rigorous professional standards even as it was squashed into oblivion. Blum, a physically frail man, was dubbed the “ideological father of armed resistance” in the Bund; he led his band of militants into joining forces with the detested Zionists in the historic Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. When the insurgency was crushed — as all the combatants knew it would be — Blum, an engineer by training, led the surviving remnant through the cavernous sewer system to safety. But soon thereafter, in fleeing the police, he plummeted three stories from an apartment building. Badly injured, he was taken to Gestapo headquarters and never seen again.
Blum and Bielecka engaged the world as they found it and fought for justice for Jews and humanity. Blum’s photo is on display at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem’s Holocaust museum.
A lot has changed in 85 years. In 1939, most Americans Jews opposed Zionism and feared it would be misused by antisemites to justify allegations of dual loyalty. At the time, twice as many Jews lived in Warsaw as in all of British Palestine. The Bund swept 17 of 20 Jewish-designated seats on city council (Blum held one of them), far outdistancing all the Zionists parties together. Socialism made sense to Jewish voters, who were overwhelmingly “blue collar.” And so did doikayt (“hereness”), the doctrine that Poland’s three million Jews belonged there, not in a far-off desert, as the Zionists maintained.
The Holocaust radically and irrevocably changed the landscape. Ninety percent of Polish Jewry was exterminated. Even after the Nazis were vanquished, Jews continued to endure pogroms and were largely purged from Poland’s ruling communist party. By then, Israel was the sole destination in the world that welcomed large numbers of Jews.
Blum and Bielecka’s daughter, 17-year-old Aviva (née Victoria), was among the pioneers who migrated to a kibbutz in the new State of Israel. Zionism offered her the promise of milk and honey in a sanctuary free of antisemitism.
For years, her younger brother, Olek, held fast to his parents’ politics. But he too ultimately exited Poland, not for Israel but for the US, saddened that his father’s dream of “a prosperous Jewish minority inside Poland was impossible to realize.”
Like their parents, Aviva and Olek too engaged the post-WWII world as they found it and sought a better world.
Today, socialism and anti-Zionism are each experiencing something of a revival in the U.S. Self-described socialists have won mayoral elections in New York, Seattle and Washington, D.C. DSA-supported candidates won the Senate Democratic primary in Florida and narrowly lost Wisconsin’s gubernatorial primary. A recent CBS News poll found that 58% of Democrats now hold a favorable view of socialism, whereas only 32% view capitalism positively. The gap is even wider among young people. Jews, despite their relative affluence, remain among the most liberal voters in the U.S., although their current views on socialism have not been scientifically surveyed.
Anti-Zionism looks quite different in 2026 than in 1939, at least to Jews. Israel, approaching its 80th anniversary, is far from the desert mirage ridiculed by pre-war Bundists. While only a minority of American Jews self-describe as Zionists, an overwhelming majority support Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. Yet they are deeply troubled by Israel’s direction: Polls show that Zohran Mamdani, a socialist and anti-Zionist, is more popular among American Jews than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
We’re left with this thought experiment: What if Abrasha and Luba resided in America today? What would they view as justice and how would they engage to achieve it? What if they resided in Israel?
And finally, a question about the rest of us: Would we recognize them as heroes?
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AIPAC couldn’t stop Michigan’s El-Sayed in the primary. Now it’s trying again.
AIPAC’s super PAC has re-entered Michigan’s closely watched U.S. Senate race less than a month before the general election, spending nearly $100,000 on mailers attacking Abdul El-Sayed, despite earlier concerns by allies of his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, that it would boost the Democratic nominee.
The spending of $94,620 by United Democracy Project (UDP) on direct mailers was disclosed in a Friday campaign finance filing. It comes after Rogers publicly welcomed AIPAC’s support during a televised debate last week, reversing the position initially taken by people close to his campaign who worried the pro-Israel group’s involvement could hurt his chances.
A spokesperson for the group told Jewish Insider that the mailers target 130,000 identified Jewish voters in the swing state. It focuses on El-Sayed’s response to an attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield earlier this year. El-Sayed drew criticism for saying “hurt people hurt people” when discussing the attacker, whose brother was reportedly a Hezbollah commander killed in an airstrike on Lebanon. El-Sayed later apologized, saying he had been trying to provide broader context for the attack.
UDP spent more than $30 million trying to defeat El-Sayed in the Democratic primary this summer and in support of Rep. Haley Stevens, who lost by about one percentage point.
Following the primary, allies of the Republican nominee reportedly asked AIPAC not to run ads to boost him, fearing that the group’s involvement would give El-Sayed the same political foil that helped him overcome its massive spending in the primary. Axios reported that AIPAC officials didn’t take that rejection easily.
But Rogers appeared to change course last Thursday when asked whether he’d welcome AIPAC’s support.
“Anybody that wants to help my campaign stop a guy who can’t condemn terrorism in our own country because he’s so close to the people who are supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, again, I’ll take all of that help,” Rogers said at Thursday’s televised debate. El-Sayed interrupted to say he had condemned terrorism.
A new super PAC, Together for Michigan, aired an ad during the debate featuring Taylor Weintraub, whose child attends the Temple Israel preschool that was attacked in March.
Rogers went further on Friday at a campaign event with Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, accusing El-Sayed of being “so anti-Jewish” that a single mailer had upset him. Rogers said he welcomed help from Jewish supporters seeking to defeat his opponent. Kennedy also attacked El-Sayed, saying AIPAC would not be involved in the race if the Democrat did not “sleep in a Bin Laden jersey.”
El-Sayed, an Israel critic who has made opposition to AIPAC a central part of his campaign, responded by accusing Rogers of desperation. “You know Mike Rogers is in trouble when he begs AIPAC to start spending against me,” he wrote on X.
Some Jewish Democrats are publicly supporting Rogers, saying El-Sayed has failed to assuage concerns in his outreach to Jewish voters and in campaign appearances in recent months. If elected, El-Sayed would become the first Muslim member of the U.S. Senate.
Recent polls show El-Sayed with a narrow lead in the race to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters. Recent elections in Michigan have been decided by narrow margins. Trump won the swing state in 2024 by about 80,000 votes, while Democratic incumbent Elissa Slotkin defeated Rogers in the Senate race that year by fewer than 20,000 votes. Four years earlier, Joe Biden won Michigan by about 2.8 percentage points.
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In Israel’s election, Netanyahu faces a reckoning over Oct. 7 failure
With barely two weeks remaining before Israel’s Oct. 27 election, the country has been consumed by an extraordinary confrontation between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior former aides over what he knew before the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7, 2023, what he did with that knowledge and whether his office subsequently sought to rewrite the historical record.
The immediate catalyst was a bombshell television interview in recent days with Maj. Gen. (res.) Avi Gil, Netanyahu’s former military secretary, who served alongside him before and during the attack that killed approximately 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage. Gil had remained largely silent for three years, expecting to present his evidence to a state commission of inquiry. But with Netanyahu blocking such an inquiry, amid transparent scheming to deflect blame, Gil decided to speak publicly.
What he described went considerably beyond the failures of intelligence and military preparedness that have already been extensively documented. Gil accused Netanyahu’s office of attempting to falsify an official record from the morning of the attack. He challenged the prime minister’s account of early warnings he received. He confirmed that Netanyahu rejected recommendations for preventive military operations against Hamas. And he described how political considerations influenced decisions over hostage negotiations, potentially prolonging the captivity of people who could have been brought home earlier – and alive.
His testimony is particularly consequential because it directly challenges a 55-page document Netanyahu released in February, presenting his version of the events preceding Oct. 7. Submitted to Israel’s state comptroller, the document portrayed Netanyahu as having repeatedly advocated tougher action against Hamas while security officials underestimated the threat. It has become central to his defense against accusations that his longstanding policy of containing Hamas helped create the conditions for the catastrophe.
Gil, who attended the relevant meetings and recorded his experiences in 16 notebooks, described the published document as a profoundly incomplete and misleading account, containing lies and half-truths. It failed to reflect even half of what he witnessed.
A separate investigation published Friday by Yedioth Ahronoth, comparing Netanyahu’s account with original records of security deliberations, reported significant omissions and distortions, including instances in which Netanyahu allegedly rejected proposals to target Hamas leaders that his February document presented as initiatives of his own.
Most explosive was Gil’s account of an alleged attempt by Netanyahu’s then-chief of staff, Tzachi Braverman, to change the official time of a telephone conversation on Oct. 7 from 6:40 a.m. to 6:29 a.m. Moving the time backward could create the impression that Netanyahu had been issuing instructions from the first moments of the assault. Gil said a stenographer told him she had been instructed to alter the record, prompting him to notify the attorney general.
Nitzan Alon, another retired general who headed the government’s hostage release operation, and took part in negotiations throughout much of the war, also told reporters that “it was possible to end the war a year earlier” and save the lives of numerous hostages who eventually died in captivity.
Another remarkable confrontation involves Ronen Bar, the former head of the Shin Bet domestic security agency, whom Netanyahu has repeatedly blamed for the failures of Oct. 7. In late September, Bar announced plans to sue Netanyahu for defamation, accusing him of conducting a campaign of false allegations about his conduct before the massacre. Bar said he had warned Netanyahu about a looming security disaster and demanded disclosure of the original records of security meetings, communications and warnings, including the prime minister’s contacts with foreign officials.
Those demands have acquired additional significance amid reports that senior officials from Egypt and the United Arab Emirates warned Netanyahu about Hamas preparations shortly before the attack. Netanyahu categorically denies receiving such warnings and has threatened legal action over the reporting.
Gil’s revelations arrived alongside another striking intervention from a former Netanyahu confidant. Yoav Horowitz, , once Netanyahu’s chief of staff and director-general of the Prime Minister’s Office, told Kan’s Reshet Bet radio last week that he had gradually come to understand that Netanyahu’s decisions were driven primarily by considerations of personal political survival rather than the national interest.
Now a senior aide to leading opposition figure Gadi Eisenkot, Horowitz attributed that transformation to the corrosive effects of prolonged power, observing that “too much time in power corrupts,” and framed the approaching election as being about saving the country.
Horowitz now heads the team preparing its first 100 days in government. His criticism therefore comes from a former trusted aide who has become an active political opponent, adding another dimension to the dispute over Netanyahu’s leadership.
The question of political survival also figured prominently in Gil’s account of the hostage negotiations. Asked whether coalition pressures had influenced decisions that delayed agreements to free hostages, Gil said some hostages could have returned earlier and that political calculations had played a role in the decisions that kept them in captivity.
Netanyahu has rejected Gil’s allegations, and his Likud party has characterized the latest revelations as politically motivated propaganda. Netanyahu and his supporters maintain that senior security officials failed to recognize the imminent danger.
The country is still struggling to establish a common factual account of its most traumatic day in decades, while the officials who participated in the crucial decisions offer sharply conflicting versions of what happened. Meanwhile, the families of those killed on Oct. 7, survivors of the massacre and former hostages continue demanding answers about the decisions that shaped their lives.
The public appetite for an inquiry into the disaster is overwhelming. A September 2025 survey by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 74 percent of Israelis supported establishing a state commission of inquiry, including 68 percent of Jewish respondents identifying with the political right. A subsequent survey conducted in February 2026 found that 92 percent of Israelis considered it important to investigate the events.
The absence of such an inquiry has left journalists, former officials, politicians and bereaved families conducting an increasingly contentious public investigation of their own. Documents appear selectively, witnesses offer competing recollections, and allegations that might otherwise be tested through sworn testimony and access to classified evidence become weapons in an election campaign. With spiraling suspicions being leveled at Netanyahu, the election will take place amid unresolved questions – and a rage that grows more toxic by the day.
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