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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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Spain Expands Anti-Israel Measures, Bans Golan, West Bank Products Amid Rising Tensions With Jerusalem
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez speaks at a press conference in Kunshan, Jiangsu province, China, Sept. 11, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Xihao Jiang
The Spanish government has announced a ban on imports from hundreds of Israeli communities in the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights — making Spain the second European Union country to implement such a policy as the latest move in its ongoing effort to boycott Israel.
According to a statement from Spain’s Ministry of Finance on Monday, the ban — set to take effect on Tuesday — is the result of a September decree “adopting urgent measures against genocide in Gaza and in support of the Palestinian population.”
The regulation “prohibits … the entry into Spain of products originating from Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
Among all members of the EU, Spain is the second country to take such action, following Slovenia — one of the bloc’s smallest economies — which became the first EU member to ban Israeli products in August, and potentially to be joined by Ireland, where parliament is currently working on a similar measure.
As a major trade partner of Spain, Israel exports roughly $850 million in goods to the country each year — about half the value of Spanish exports to Israel — with products from the West Bank and the Golan making up only a small fraction of those shipments, according to the Israel Export Institute.
Spain’s newly implemented measure marks its latest attempts to curb Israel’s defensive campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, as ties between the two countries continue to deteriorate amid ongoing tensions.
Since the start of the war in Gaza, Spain has launched a fierce anti-Israel campaign aimed at undermining and isolating the Jewish state on the international stage.
Even as Spain ramps up its anti-Israel campaign, authorities this week granted Airbus exceptional permission to produce aircraft and drones using Israeli technology at its Spanish plants — despite having banned military and dual-use products from the Jewish state just two months ago.
Approved last Tuesday by the cabinet and defended by several ministers this week, the exemption reflects the pressure from companies and domestic interests that some of Europe’s toughest critics of Israel’s recent war have faced as they attempt to impose trade sanctions.
In September, Spain passed a law to take “urgent measures to stop the genocide in Gaza,” banning trade in defense material and dual-use products from Israel, as well as imports and advertising of products originating from Israeli settlements.
On Tuesday, Spain’s consumer ministry ordered seven travel booking websites to take down 138 listings for holiday homes in Palestinian territories, warning they could face sanctions if they continue advertising Israeli-owned properties in those areas.
Earlier this year, the Spanish government also announced it would bar entry to individuals involved in what it called a “genocide against Palestinians,” block Israel-bound ships and aircraft carrying weapons from Spanish ports and airspace, and enforce an embargo on products from Israeli communities in the West Bank.
Spain has also canceled a €700 million ($825 million) deal for Israeli-designed rocket launchers, as the government conducts a broader review to systematically phase out Israeli weapons and technology from its armed forces.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has faced increasing backlash from his country’s political leaders and Jewish community, who accuse him of fueling antisemitic hostility.
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UN’s Francesca Albanese Lashes Out at ‘Pro-Genocide Minions’ After Georgetown University Severs Ties
Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for Palestinian human rights, on Nov. 14, 2023. Photo: AAPIMAGE via Reuters Connect
A controversial United Nations official who has been criticized for using her role to promote anti-Israel bias and pro-Hamas propaganda denied on Monday that Georgetown University severed its relationship with her due to accusations that she is antisemitic, explaining that she was dropped due to the US government’s decision to sanction her.
“I had an affiliation with a US university. I used to lecture there. Everything has been cut down,” she said earlier this month at an event with ODI Global.
A university official confirmed to JNS on Friday that Georgetown severed ties with Albanese due to the imposition of sanctions, saying, “US institutions are prohibited by federal law from affiliating with individuals subject to US sanctions.”
In July, the Trump administration sanctioned Albanese, accusing her of “political and economic warfare” against the US and Israel. “Albanese has spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at the time.
Following news of Georgetown’s severing ties with Albanese, some media reports suggested the decision was based on her antisemitic comments. The UN official appeared to respond to such claims on the social media platform X.
“Georgetown’s decision to end my 10-year-old affiliation is yet another fallout of the sanctions the US imposed on me last July for exposing Israel’s genocide and the complicity of US businesses. Any other explanation is the usual laughable propaganda of the pro-genocide minions,” she posted on X.
Albanese, an Italian lawyer and academic, has an extensive history of using her role at the UN to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s attacks on the Jewish state.
In August, she defended Hamas as a legitimate “political force” in Gaza that has built schools and hospitals while ruling the Palestinian enclave for nearly two decades, arguing that people should not think of the internationally designated terrorist group as armed “cut-throats” or “fighters.”
Months earlier, Albanese called on all medical professionals to cut ties with Israel, accusing the Jewish state of committing “genocide” — an accusation she made repeatedly since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
The UN recently launched a probe into Albanese’s conduct over allegedly accepting a trip to Australia funded by pro-Hamas organizations.
While speaking at a Washington, DC bookstore last October, Albanese also accused Israel of weaponizing the fallout of the Oct. 7 atrocities to justify the continued “colonization” of Gaza.
Albanese claimed last year that Israelis were “colonialists” who had “fake identities.” Previously, she defended Palestinians’ “right to resist” Israeli “occupation” at a time when over 1,100 rockets were fired by Gaza terrorists at Israel. In 2023, US lawmakers called for the firing of Albanese for what they described as her “outrageous” antisemitic statements, including a 2014 letter in which she claimed America was “subjugated by the Jewish lobby.”
Albanese’s anti-Israel comments have earned her the praise of Hamas officials in the past.
In response to French President Emmanuel Macron’s calling Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel the “largest antisemitic massacre of the 21st century,” Albanese said, “No, Mr. Macron. The victims of Oct. 7 were not killed because of their Judaism, but in response to Israel’s oppression.”
Video footage of the Oct. 7 onslaught showed Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas celebrating the fact that they were murdering Jews.
Nevertheless, Albanese has argued that Israel should make peace with Hamas, saying that it “needs to make peace with Hamas in order to not be threatened by Hamas.” In July 2024, she also called for Israel to be expelled from the UN.
Albanese even once confessed that she struggles with impartiality. In an interview with the Institute for Palestine Studies in which she discussed Palestinian refugees and the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) she said, “I feared deep down perhaps I feared that embarking on research on a matter on which I deeply held personal views could compromise my objectivity.”
UN Watch cheered Albanese’s dismissal from Georgetown as a victory against rising antisemitism.
“We welcome Georgetown University’s decision,” UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer said in a statement. “Academic institutions have a responsibility to uphold basic standards of integrity and human dignity. Removing an official who has repeatedly trafficked in antisemitic rhetoric and justified terrorism is a necessary step toward restoring those standards.”
Calling on the UN to join Georgetown in dismissing Albanese, he added, “This sends an important message. Positions of authority at the United Nations do not grant immunity from accountability, and universities should not serve as safe havens for those who abuse their platforms to promote hatred. The UN must follow Georgetown’s lead and remove Albanese.”
Albanese is not without allies at Georgetown. One of them, Middle East studies associate professor Nader Hashemi, said on X that Albanese’s status as a sanctioned person will change if and when the Democrats win the US presidency and that she will be hosted at Georgetown again.
“As soon as the sanctions are lifted on Francesca, we plan to host a [sic] her again at Georgetown University,” he wrote. “I’m certain her affiliation will also be restored. When she does return to campus, I suspect there is not a room large enough to accommodate all the people who want to meet her.”
Hatred for Israel, often fueled by the spread of misinformation about the Jewish state’s history and conduct in Gaza, is fueling violence against Jews in the US and elsewhere, according to experts who spoke with The Algemeiner earlier this year.
In June, an assailant firebombed a pro-Israel rally with Molotov cocktails and a “makeshift” flamethrower in Boulder, Colorado, killing one person and injuring 13 in what US authorities called a targeted terrorist attack. According to court documents, the man charged for the attack yelled “Free Palestine” during the violence and also told investigators that he wanted to “kill all Zionist people.”
The Colorado firebombing came less than two weeks after a gunman murdered two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC, while they were leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum hosted by the American Jewish Committee. The suspect charged for the double murder also yelled “Free Palestine” while being arrested by police after the shooting, according to video of the incident. The FBI affidavit supported the criminal charges against the suspect stated that he told law enforcement he “did it for Gaza.”
Recent research has found that anti-Zionist faculty at universities have created a hostile climate for Jews and Israelis.
According to a recent survey conducted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Academic Engagement Network (AEN), university faculty and staff have exacerbated the antisemitism crisis by politicizing the classroom, promoting anti-Israel bias, and even discriminating against Jewish colleagues.
The actions by faculty provided an academic pretext for the relentless wave of antisemitic incidents of discrimination and harassment which pro-Hamas activists have perpetrated against Jewish and Israeli members of campus communities since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, according to the survey, released in September.
The survey of “Jewish-identifying US-based faculty members” found that 73 percent of Jewish faculty witnessed their colleagues engaging in antisemitic activity, and a significant percentage named the Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP) group as the force driving it. Of those aware of an FSJP chapter on their campus, the vast majority of respondents reported that the chapter engaged in anti-Israel programming (77.2 percent), organized anti-Israel protests and demonstrations (79.4 percent), and endorsed anti-Israel divestment campaigns (84.8 percent).
Additionally, 50 percent of respondents said that anti-Zionist faculty have established de facto, or “shadow,” boycotts of Israel on campus even in the absence of formal declaration or recognition of one by the administration. Among those who reported the presence of such a boycott, 55 percent noted that departments avoid co-sponsoring events with Jewish or pro-Israel groups and 29.5 percent said this policy is also subtly enacted by sabotaging negotiations for partnerships with Israeli institutions. All the while, such faculty fostered an environment in which Jewish professors were “maligned, professionally isolated, and in severe cases, doxxed or harassed” as they assumed the right to determine for their Jewish colleagues what constitutes antisemitism.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Russian Teen Assaulted Over Israeli Flag Photo as Antisemitism Concerns Mount, Amid Calls for Jews to Leave Country
Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, former chief rabbi of Moscow and current president of the Conference of European Rabbis, on June 24, 2024. Photo: IMAGO/epd via Reuters Connect
A 15-year-old student at a school in Russia was brutally assaulted by classmates after posting a photo featuring an Israeli flag on social media, Russian media reported, leaving him with a serious eye fracture from an incident that has drawn public outrage and is now under criminal investigation.
Earlier this month, a high school student in St. Petersburg, a major city in northwestern Russia, was physically attacked by two classmates after changing his social media profile photo to one featuring an Israeli flag, according to a report by local News Channel 78 on Sunday.
One of the attackers allegedly harassed the boy over his profile picture, demanding that he remove it and apologize.
After a verbal confrontation in which the attacker threatened the boy and hurled insults, including references to the Holocaust, he allegedly demanded that the victim meet him in the bathroom to continue the discussion.
When the two boys met there, the assailant reportedly demanded that he apologize on his knees. The victim refused but said he was willing to apologize without being humiliated.
The attacker then struck him repeatedly in the face while another boy blocked the bathroom exit.
The victim had to be hospitalized after suffering a fracture to the eye socket and underwent surgery under general anesthesia to remove bone fragments.
After spending more than a week in the hospital, he is now receiving outpatient care, and his family is coordinating with school administrators on a transition to home-based schooling as recommended by his doctors.
The boy’s mother reported the assault to the police, prompting local authorities to open a criminal investigation for assault and battery.
This incident came after Pinchas Goldschmidt, who served as Moscow’s chief rabbi from 1993 to 2022, recently urged Jews to leave Russia and consider immigrating to Israel, citing a growing hostile climate and rising antisemitic attacks targeting the local Jewish community.
“I have long urged Russia’s Jews to consider aliyah, the return to Israel. The post-Soviet renaissance was extraordinary, but illusions of permanence ignore history,” Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis, wrote in an op-ed for The Jerusalem Post earlier this month.
“Now, more than ever, Russia’s Jews should heed the call to leave. Israel offers not just refuge but a homeland where Jewish life is sovereign, not contingent on geopolitical whims,” he continued.
Although the number of Jews leaving Russia has declined, the country still accounted for the largest number of immigrants to Israel in 2025, with roughly 8,300 arrivals, according to data released Monday by Israel’s Immigration and Absorption Ministry.
This figure marked a nearly 60 percent drop from 19,500 last year and a small fraction of the 74,000 who immigrated in 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.