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Why a liberal Zionist rabbi isn’t taking to the streets over Israel’s judicial reform plan
(JTA) — Israel’s 75th anniversary was supposed to be a blowout birthday party for its supporters, but that was before the country was convulsed by street protests over the right-wing government’s proposal to overhaul its judiciary. Critics call it an unprecedented threat to Israel’s democracy, and supporters of Israel found themselves conflicted. In synagogues across North America, rabbis found themselves giving “yes, but” sermons: Yes, Israel’s existence is a miracle, but its democracy is fragile and in danger.
One of those sermons was given a week ago Saturday by Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch of Manhattan’s Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, expressing his “dismay” over the government’s actions. Hirsch is the former head of ARZA, the Reform movement’s Zionist organization, and the founder of a new organization, Amplify Israel, meant to promote Zionism among Reform Jews. He is often quoted as an example of a mainstream non-Orthodox rabbi who not only criticizes anti-Zionism on the far left but who insists that his liberal colleagues are not doing enough to defend the Jewish state from its critics.
Many on the Jewish left, meanwhile, say Jewish establishment figures, even liberals like Hirsch, have been too reluctant to call out Israel on, for example, its treatment of the Palestinians — thereby enabling the country’s extremists.
In March, however, he warned that the “Israeli government is tearing Israeli society apart and bringing world Jewry along for the dangerous ride.” That is uncharacteristically strong language from a rabbi whose forthcoming book, “The Lilac Tree: A Rabbi’s Reflections on Love, Courage, and History,” includes a number of essays on the limits of criticizing Israel. When does such criticism give “comfort to left-wing hatred of Israel,” as he writes in his book, and when does failure to criticize Israel appear to condone extremism?
Although the book includes essays on God, Torah, history and antisemitism, in a recent interview we focused on the Israel-Diaspora divide, the role of Israel in the lives of Diaspora Jews and why the synagogue remains the “central Jewish institution.”
The interview was edited for length and clarity.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: You gave a sermon earlier this month about the 75th anniversary of Israel’s founding, which is usually a time of celebration in American synagogues, but you also said you were “dismayed” by the “political extremism” and “religious fundamentalism” of the current government. Was that difficult as a pulpit rabbi?
Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch: The approach is more difficult now with the election of the new government than it has been in all the years of the past. Because we can’t sanitize supremacism, elitism, extremism, fundamentalism, and we’re not going to. Israel is in what’s probably the most serious domestic crisis in the 75-year history of the state. And what happens in Israel affects American Jewry directly. It’s Israeli citizens who elect their representatives, but that’s not the end of the discussion neither for Israelis or for American Jews. At the insistence of both parties, both parties say the relationship is fundamental and critical and it not only entitles but requires Israelis and world Jews to be involved in each other’s affairs.
For American Jewry, in its relationship with Israel, our broadest objective is to sustain that relationship, deepen that relationship, and encourage people to be involved in the affairs in Israel and to go to Israel, spend time in Israel and so forth, and that’s a difficult thing to do and at the same time be critical.
American Jews have been demonstrating here in solidarity with the Israelis who have been protesting the recent judicial overhaul proposals in Israel. Is that a place for liberal American Jews to make their voices heard on what happens in Israel?
I would like to believe that if I were living in Israel, I would be at every single one of those demonstrations on Saturday night, but I don’t participate in demonstrations here because the context of our world and how we operate is different from in Israel when an Israeli citizen goes out and marches on Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv. It’s presumed that they’re Zionists and they’re speaking to their own government. I’m not critical of other people who reach a different perspective in the United States, but for me, our context is different. Even if we say the identical words in Tel Aviv or on West 68th Street, they’re perceived in a different way and they operate in a different context.
What then is the appropriate way for American Jews to express themselves if they are critical of an action by the Israeli government?
My strongest guidance is don’t disengage, don’t turn your back, double down, be more supportive of those who support your worldview and are fighting for it in Israel. Polls seem to suggest that the large majority of Israelis are opposed to these reforms being proposed. Double down on those who are supportive of our worldview.
You lament in your book that the connections to Israel are weakening among world Jewry, especially among Jewish liberals.
The liberal part of the Jewish world is where I am and where the people I serve are by and large, and where at least 80% of American Jewry resides. It’s a difficult process because we’re operating here in a context of weakening relationship: a rapidly increasing emphasis on universal values, what we sometimes call tikkun olam [social justice], and not as a reflection of Jewish particularism, but often at the expense of Jewish particularism.
There is a counter-argument, however, which you describe in your book: “some left-wing Jewish activists contend that alienation from Israel, especially among the younger generations, is a result of the failures of the American Jewish establishment” — that is, by not doing more to express their concerns about the dangers of Jewish settlement in the West Bank, for example, the establishment alienated young liberal Jews. You’re skeptical of that argument. Tell me why.
Fundamentally I believe that identification with Israel is a reflection of identity. If you have a strong Jewish identity, the tendency is to have a strong connection with the state of Israel and to believe that the Jewish state is an important component of your Jewish identity. I think that surveys bear that out. No doubt the Palestinian question will have an impact on the relationship between American Jews in Israel as long as it’s not resolved, it will be an outstanding irritant because it raises moral dilemmas that should disturb every thinking and caring Jew. And I’ve been active in trying to oppose ultra-Orthodox coercion in Israel. But fundamentally, while these certainly are components putting pressure on the relationship between Israel and Diaspora Jewry, in particular among the elites of the American Jewish leadership, for the majority of American Jews, the relationship with Israel is a reflection of their relationship with Judaism. And if that relationship is weak and weakening, as day follows night, the relationship with Israel will weaken as well.
But what about the criticism that has come from, let’s say, deep within the tent? I am thinking of the American rabbinical students who in 2021 issued a public letter accusing Israel of apartheid and calling on American Jewish communities to hold Israel accountable for the “violent suppression of human rights.” They were certainly engaged Jews, and they might say that they were warning the establishment about the kinds of right-wing tendencies in Israel that you and others in the establishment are criticizing now.
Almost every time I speak about Israel and those who are critical of Israel, I hold that the concept of criticism is central to Jewish tradition. Judaism unfolds through an ongoing process of disputation, disagreement, argumentation, and debate. I’m a pluralist, both politically as well as intellectually.
In response to your question, I would say two things. First of all, I distinguish between those who are Zionist, pro-Israel, active Jews with a strong Jewish identity who criticize this or that policy of the Israeli government, and between those who are anti-Zionists, because anti-Zionism asserts that the Jewish people has no right to a Jewish state, at least in that part of the world. And that inevitably leads to anti-Jewish feelings and very often to antisemitism.
When it came to the students, I didn’t respond at all because I was a student once too, and there are views that I hold today that I didn’t hold when I was a student. Their original article was published in the Forward, if I’m not mistaken, and it generated some debate in all the liberal seminaries. I didn’t respond at all until it became a huge, multi-thousand word piece in The New York Times. Once it left the internal Jewish scene, it seemed to me that I had an obligation to respond. Not that I believe that they’re anti-Zionist — I do not. I didn’t put them in the BDS camp [of those who support the boycott of Israel]. I just simply criticized them.
Hundreds of Jews protest the proposed Israeli court reform outside the Israeli consulate in New York City on Feb. 21, 2023. (Gili Getz)
You signed a letter with other rabbis noting that the students’ petition came during Israel’s war with Hamas that May, writing that “those who aspire to be future leaders of the Jewish people must possess and model empathy for their brothers and sisters in Israel, especially when they are attacked by a terrorist organization whose stated goal is to kill Jews and destroy the Jewish State.”
My main point was that the essence of the Jewish condition is that all Jews feel responsible one for the another — Kol yisrael arevim zeh bazeh. And that relationship starts with emotions. It starts with a feeling of belongingness to the Jewish people, and a feeling of concern for our people who are attacked in the Jewish state. My criticism was based, in the middle of a war, on expressing compassion, support for our people who are under indiscriminate and terrorist assault. I uphold that and even especially in retrospect two years later, why anyone would consider that to be offensive in any way is still beyond me.
You were executive director of ARZA, the Reform Zionist organization, and you write in your book that Israel “is the primary source of our people’s collective energy — the engine for the recreation and restoration of the national home and the national spirit of the Jewish people.” A number of your essays put Israel at the center of the present-day Jewish story. You are a rabbi in New York City. So what’s the role or function of the Diaspora?
Our existence in the Diaspora needs no justification. For practically all of the last 2,000 years, Jewish life has existed in the Diaspora. It’s only for the last 75 years and if you count the beginning of the Zionist movement, the last 125 years or so that Jews have begun en masse to live in the land of Israel. Much of the values of what we call now Judaism was developed in the Diaspora. Moreover, the American Jewish community is the strongest, most influential, most glorious of all the Jewish Diasporas in Jewish history.
And yet, the only place in the Jewish world where the Jewish community is growing is in Israel. More Jewish children now live in Israel than all the other places in the world combined. The central value that powers the sustainability, viability and continuity of the Jewish people is peoplehood. It’s not the values that have sustained the Jewish people in the Diaspora and over the last 2,000 years, which was Torah or God, what we would call religion. I’m a rabbi. I believe in the centrality of God, Torah and religion to sustain Jewish identity. But in the 21st century, Israel is the most eloquent concept of the value of Jewish peoplehood. And therefore, I do not believe that there is enough energy, enough power, enough sustainability in the classical concept of Judaism to sustain continuity in the Diaspora. The concept of Jewish peoplehood is the most powerful way that we can sustain Jewish continuity in the 21st century.
But doesn’t that negate the importance of American Jewry?
In my view, it augments the sustainability of American Jewry. If American Jews disengage from Israel, and from the concept of Jewish peoplehood, and also don’t consider religion to be at the center of their existence, then what’s left? Now there’s a lot of activity, for example, on tikkun olam, which is a part of Jewish tradition. But tikkun olam in Judaism always was a blend between Jewish particularism and universalism — concern for humanity at large but rooted in the concept of Jewish peoplehood. But very often now, tikkun olam in the Diaspora is practiced not as a part of the concept of Jewish particularism but, as I said before, at the expense of Jewish particularism. That will not be enough to sustain Jewish communities going into the 21st century.
I want to ask about the health of the American synagogue as an institution. Considering your concern about the waning centrality of Torah and God in people’s lives — especially among the non-Orthodox — do you feel optimistic about it as an institution? Does it have to change?
I’ve believed since the beginning of my career that there’s no substitute in the Diaspora for the synagogue as the central Jewish institution. We harm ourselves when we underemphasize the central role of the synagogue. Any issue that is being done by one of the hundreds of Jewish agencies that we’ve created rests on our ability as a community to produce Jews into the next generation. And what are those institutions that produce that are most responsible for the production of Jewish continuity? Synagogues, day schools and summer camps, and of the three synagogues are by far the most important for the following reasons: First, we’re the only institution that defines ourselves as and whose purpose is what we call cradle to grave. Second, for most American Jews, if they end up in any institution at all it will be a synagogue. Far fewer American Jews will receive a day school education and or go to Jewish summer camps. That should have ramifications across the board for American Jewish policy, including how we budget Jewish institutions. We should be focusing many, many more resources on these three institutions, and at the core of that is the institution of the synagogue.
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UK Announces Reforms to Accelerate Firings of Antisemitic Doctors
Wes Streeting, the British secretary of state for health and social care, is seen in Westminster as he appears on Sunday politics shows, London, England, United Kingdom, Oct. 26, 2025. Photo: Tayfun Salci/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
The United Kingdom on Tuesday announced a series of reforms to empower its General Medical Council (GMC), a key regulatory body, to act forcibly in removing bigots who endanger patients.
The move followed several high-profile cases both in the UK and around the world involving medical practitioners promoting antisemitic beliefs online and even threatening or boasting about their hate for Jewish people as well as Israelis.
John Mann, who serves in the House of Lords and as the government’s independent adviser on antisemitism, was tasked in October with reviewing the severity of antisemitism in the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) and exploring methods to counter it in October.
“There are just too many examples, clear examples, of antisemitism that have not been dealt with adequately or effectively,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer said at the time, directing Mann to “root out this problem and ensure perpetrators are always held to account.”
The results of that investigation led to the new reforms unveiled on Tuesday — changes described by the UK government as “key” and “the most significant overhaul of the regulation of medical professionals since 1983.”
Specifically, UK Secretary Wes Streeting and his Department of Health and Social Care focused on three main changes.
First, the GMC should “retain its existing right to appeal decisions made by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) to the courts, ensuring there remains a robust check on fitness to practice outcomes.” The MPTS adjudicates on complaints made against doctors.
Second, the Professional Standards Authority (PSA), which oversees all health-care regulators, will gain expanded authority to challenge decisions from the MPTS.
Third, regulatory bodies must now share information with the PSA when requested, a move intended to provide greater scrutiny of regulatory decisions and potential times to intervene.
“Racism, including anti-Jewish racism, has no place in the health sector or our NHS, and those who engage in it should face swift and meaningful consequences,” Mann said in a statement. “For too long, the system has been too slow and too cumbersome to deliver that.”
The GMC’s chief executive and registrar, Charlie Massey, called the reforms a “long-awaited step” and explained how the changes would work.
“Patients rightly expect assurance that doctors, PAs, and AAs are safe to practice and can be held to account if serious concerns are raised,” Massey said. “These proposed reforms will allow us to respond more quickly and flexibly when patient safety is at risk. They will also allow us to further improve our efficiency and effectiveness, while at the same time enabling us to help patients navigate the complaints and concerns process more easily.”
Mann said the reforms “will help deliver change” and added he was “pleased” the government moved quickly to act on his recommendations.
The UK health-care system has been riddled with cases of alleged antisemitism over the past several months,
The case of Dr. Rahmeh Aladwan, a trainee trauma and orthopedic surgeon, particularly drew public attention. In November, Aladwan was suspended from practicing medicine in the UK for 15 months over social media posts denigrating Jews and celebrating terrorism.
Aladwan had called online for the ethnic cleaning of Jews and celebrated the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel. She also described Israelis as “worse than Nazis” and Hamas operatives as “oppressed resistance fighters, not terrorists.”
The anti-Israel activist also made explicitly antisemitic claims, such as labeling the Royal Free Hospital in London “a Jewish supremacy cesspit” and asserting that “over 90% of the world’s Jews are genocidal.”
On a Feb. 7, 2026, episode of the “Blood Brothers” podcast, Aladwan called on Muslims in the countries around Israel to wage a violent jihad.
British law enforcement had arrested Aladwan on Oct. 21, charging her with four counts related to malicious communications and inciting racial hatred.
Aladwan’s arrest followed the GMC’s clearing her to continue treating patients, finding that her conduct had not done anything to “undermine public confidence in the medical profession” and that her comments did not “amount to bullying or harassment.” The MPTS panel concluded that “a reasonable and fully informed member of the public would not be alarmed or concerned” by her being allowed to continue treating patients.
However, following widespread backlash, the GMC said it had re-referred Aladwan’s case to the MPTS for “an interim orders tribunal,” adding that such referrals are made when an interim order “is necessary to protect the public or public confidence in doctors during an investigation.”
The 15-month suspension came about two weeks after Streeting called it “chilling” that some members of the Jewish community fear discrimination within the NHS, amid reports of widespread antisemitism in Britain’s health-care system.
Other incidents in the UK included a Jewish family fearing their London doctor’s antisemitism influenced their disabled son’s treatment. The North London hospital suspended the physician who was under investigation for publicly claiming that all Jews have “feelings of supremacy” and downplaying antisemitism.
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Arabic Wikipedia Riddled With Terror Propaganda and Bias, New Investigation Shows
Avishek Das / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect
Arabic-language Wikipedia is riddled with systemic bias and extreme terrorist propaganda, a new investigation shows, raising serious questions about the reliability of one of the world’s most widely used information sources and exposing millions of readers worldwide to potentially harmful content.
On Tuesday, the World Jewish Congress’s Institute for Technology and Human Rights released a report revealing that Arabic-language Wikipedia content repeatedly violates the platform’s core neutrality rules, specifically in articles covering the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Extremist influence runs deep in major Wikipedia articles, with 25 to over 50 percent of citations drawn from Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist propaganda sources, spreading radical narratives and terror-supporting content to millions of readers worldwide.
The World Jewish Congress (WJC)’s latest findings also reveal that the terrorist groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are often described as legitimate resistance factions, while attacks on civilians are labeled “martyrdom operations.”
Some articles go further, not only referring to designated terrorists as “martyrs” but also celebrating suicide bombings and attacks on civilians as historical “achievements.”
“This report demonstrates that one of the world’s most trusted knowledge platforms is being systematically manipulated to promote extremist narratives,” Yfat Barak-Cheney, executive director of WJC’s Institute for Technology and Human Rights, said in a statement.
“When terrorist propaganda and hate-driven narratives are allowed to masquerade as neutral information, the consequences extend far beyond Wikipedia itself. These distortions shape public understanding and views of Jews and Israelis across the Arabic-speaking world,” she continued.
In one of its most recent controversies, Wikipedia came under fire last month after a human rights group allegedly linked to Hamas began training Palestinians to edit pages on Israel and the war in Gaza, raising fears of anti-Israel propaganda and antisemitic content on the platform.
According to WJC, the newly released report shows that manipulated Wikipedia content is creating worldwide risks by influencing public discourse and the AI systems that millions rely on, allowing biased information to extend far beyond the site itself.
The report recommends that technology companies and search engines put safeguards in place when using Wikipedia content for AI training and search systems until meaningful reforms are implemented.
“We call on [the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates the Wikipedia website,] to take urgent action to restore neutrality and accountability on Arabic Wikipedia, including enforcing existing neutrality standards, removing administrators who enable extremist propaganda, and implementing centralized monitoring mechanisms for terrorism-related content,” the statement read.
Last year, the US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, opened an investigation into the Wikimedia Foundation, demanding answers over concerns that hostile foreign actors are exploiting the online encyclopedia to insert anti-Israel or antisemitic framing designed to sway audiences.
Months earlier, the US Justice Department warned the Wikimedia Foundation that its nonprofit status could be jeopardized for possibly violating its “legal obligations and fiduciary responsibilities” under US law.
Specifically, US officials expressed concern about accusations that the online encyclopedia has spread “propaganda” and allowed “foreign actors to manipulate information” while maintaining a systemic bias against Israel.
“Wikipedia has long presented itself as humanity’s shared knowledge repository,” Barak-Cheney said in a statement on Tuesday. “Ensuring that this knowledge remains factual is particularly critical as emerging AI platforms increasingly rely on multilingual information sources to formulate responses to user queries.”
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Trump Administration Launches New Probes Into Discrimination at Harvard After Suing School Over Antisemitism
US President Donald Trump delivers an address to the nation from the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House in Washington, DC, USA on Dec. 17, 2025. Photo: Reuters Connect
The US government has launched two new investigations into campus antisemitism and racial preferences — popularly known as “affirmative action” — at Harvard University, continuing the Trump administration’s legal barrage against the institution for allegedly not adhering to federal civil rights laws.
“Harvard University should know better. Its name will always be tied to the landmark Supreme Court case that found sweeping racial discrimination in admissions and the campus has been in the spotlight for tolerating egregious antisemitic harassment for years now,” US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement on Monday announcing the federal actions. “No one — not even Harvard — is above the law. If Harvard continues to stonewall as we try to verify its basic compliance with antidiscrimination statutes, we will vigorously hold them to account to ensure students’ rights are protected.”
This week’s newly announced inquiries will be led by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR).
In a press release, the department said Harvard has “refused” to cooperate with OCR’s attempts to verify that it no longer confers admission based in part on racial identity, as stipulated by a 2023 US Supreme Court ruling which said that the enterprise is unconstitutional.
“OCR will investigate whether Harvard continues to use illegal race-based preferences in admissions despite the Supreme Court’s definitive ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard,” the department said in Tuesday’s statement. “OCR will also investigate alleged ongoing antisemitic harassment on Harvard’s campus and the institution’s purported failure to protect Jewish students. The Trump administration will evaluate both complaints and, if continued discrimination is found, take action to hold Harvard accountable for any illegal policies or actions.”
Writing to The Harvard Crimson, the university’s campus newspaper, Harvard said the racial preferences investigation is “the government’s latest retaliatory” move “against [the school] for its refusal to surrender our independence and constitutional rights.”
McMahon announced the probes just three days after the Trump administration filed a lawsuit in federal court in Massachusetts arguing that Harvard ignored antisemitism while extreme anti-Zionist activists subjected Jewish students to harassment and discrimination in violation of civil rights laws as well as the institution’s own purported commitment to anti-racism.
The complaint demanded the recovery of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded grants and other federal support Harvard received during the years in which it allegedly neglected to correct the hostile campus environment.
The lawsuit marked a shift in the Trump administration’s previous strategy of confiscating Harvard’s federal money and then defending the action in court. That policy has yielded mixed results, making a strong political statement while leaving Harvard strong enough to mobilize its GDP-sized wealth to sidestep the worst potential consequences by issuing bonds or bringing the matter before judges who have been sympathetic to their case.
As previously reported, by The Algemeiner, US federal judge Allison Burroughs ruled in September that Trump acted unconstitutionally when his administration impounded more than $2 billion in research grants from Harvard, charging that he had “used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically motivated assault on this country’s premier universities.” Burroughs went on to argue that the federal government violated Harvard’s free speech rights under the US Constitution’s First Amendment.
The Trump administration maintains that pervasive antisemitism has been a major issue at Harvard,
“Harvard has been and remains deliberately indifferent to what its own Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israel Bias deemed the ‘exclusion of Israeli or Zionist students from social spaces and extracurricular activities,’” US Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon argued in Friday’s filing. “Harvard has failed to enforce its rules or meaningfully discipline the mobs that occupy its buildings and terrorize its Jewish and Israeli students. Harvard instead rewarded students who assaulted, harassed, or intimidated their Jewish and Israeli peers.”
In a statement, Harvard contested the government’s account of the facts, saying it “deeply cares about members of our Jewish and Israeli community and remains committed to ensuring they are embraced, respected, and can thrive on our campus.” It also argued that it enacted “substantive, proactive steps to address the root causes of antisemitism and actively enforces anti-harassment and anti-discrimination rules and policies on campus.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Harvard’s Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism acknowledged that the university administration’s handling of campus antisemitism fell well below its obligations under both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its own nondiscrimination policies.
Jewish members of the Harvard community have expressed concern about the climate on campus.
Last week, a new report issued by the Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance (HJAA) revealed Jewish undergraduate enrollment at the university has plummeted to lows not seen since the eve of World War II and the Holocaust, falling to just 7 percent.
While the report denied that declining Jewish enrollment at Harvard is alone the result of racial preferences in admissions — which, in the name of “diversity,” affords preferential consideration to applicants whose academic achievement and standardized test scores fall outside the range of the typical elite students who schools like Harvard select for membership in the Ivy League — it found a similar trend occurring at Yale University.
Yale infamously adopted racial preferences under the leadership of President Kingman Brewster in the 1960s, despite growing evidence that the practice created an environment of academic maladjustment and racial division. This led to the creation of segregated programming and amenities for African Americans, as well as a summer remedial program for minority students — PROP (Pre-Orientation Program) — that was eventually rebranded in the late 1990s when its apparent subtext proved unpalatable to a new generation of students.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.