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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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Haley Stevens cheered at Jewish day school after endorsing GOP Senate candidate
(JTA) — Democratic Michigan U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens was given an extended ovation at a fundraising gala for a Detroit-area Jewish day school Sunday, hours after her endorsement of Republican Mike Rogers for Senate.
Stevens, a longtime pro-Israel stalwart, was celebrated at the Yeshiva Beth Yehudah annual dinner as many members of her party across the country spoke out against her decision to break with Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed.
Video of Stevens’ minute-long standing ovation was shared on social media by representatives of Agudath Israel of America, a major Orthodox advocacy group. Strongly pro-Israel Jews have largely lauded her move to Rogers, which she said came about in part because of her objections to El-Sayed’s past relationship with anti-Israel streamer Hasan Piker.
Also on Sunday evening, Stevens struggled to explain the timing of her decision in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper. One consistency in her response was her belief that she was helping Democrats beat back antisemitism within their own party.
“I’m trying to help the Democratic Party. I felt the same way about Graham Platner and his Nazi tattoo,” Stevens said, referencing the Maine Senate candidate who ultimately stepped down from the nomination. Asked if she believed El-Sayed is antisemitic, she responded, “I think some of the actions have certainly been antisemitic, Anderson, but I’m just sick of who he stands with.”
She named Piker and “the uncle,” referring to Piker’s uncle Cenk Uygur, whose PAC produced an ad supporting El-Sayed that blamed Israel for the price of groceries. After Stevens publicly pressured El-Sayed to condemn the ad’s contents, the candidate appeared to do so on Saturday night, which Stevens celebrated in a statement — hours before endorsing Rogers.
To Cooper, Stevens suggested that many other Democrats felt the way she did.
“I’ve been hearing from a ton of Dems, Anderson, who have said, ‘Thank you. This is how we felt.’ They haven’t liked this campaign. It’s painful,” she said. A growing number of Michigan Jewish Democrats have pledged to vote for Rogers, though more than 1,000 have also signed a letter pledging to vote for El-Sayed.
Yeshiva Beth Yehudah is spread across multiple suburban Detroit campuses and is the largest Jewish day school in the state. Its annual fundraising dinner, “An Evening of Unity,” is known for drawing big national names in politics and the media, usually from both major parties.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, was the evening’s keynote speaker, and the gala program also featured personal letters from President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
But it was Stevens, a regular supporter of the school, who turned the most heads. She was also presented with what the emcee called “a specially designed, illuminated book of the five scrolls of our prophets, which remind you all of our heartfelt esteem and appreciation for who you are.”
The yeshiva’s leadership also extended warm wishes to Stevens’ Jewish fiancé, Democratic megadonor Jason Turkish, whom the yeshiva’s emcee described as “our dear friend.” Turkish’s own endorsement of Rogers came days before the congresswoman’s.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Haley Stevens cheered at Jewish day school after endorsing GOP Senate candidate appeared first on The Forward.
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These Michigan rabbis couldn’t get El-Sayed’s attention. Now they’re going national.
(JTA) — ANN ARBOR – Shortly before an Oct. 24 rally featuring Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and former President Barack Obama in Detroit, 250 rabbis from across the country urged them both to take their concerns more seriously about El-Sayed’s position on Israel.
The rabbis were speaking on behalf of a group called Nonnegotiable Michigan, and they require El-Sayed to commit to their five demands before they will support him. In this case, they wanted him to vocalize support for “Jewish statehood in Israel” and a commitment to safety for “Zionist Jews” — and to do it onstage.
To their disappointment, neither headliner mentioned the movement or its demands — and El-Sayed will soon wrap his campaign, likely without having done so at all. Now the nascent movement is facing criticism from Jews to its left that the tactic backfired and made Jews more vulnerable.
In the campaign’s final days, Nonnegotiable’s attempt to find a voice in the race has also been overshadowed by pro-Israel Democratic congresswoman Haley Stevens’ endorsement of El-Sayed’s opponent, Republican former congressman Mike Rogers.
Still, the letter was the biggest rabbinical foray into U.S. politics since more than 1,100 clergy signed an open letter last year condemning “rising anti-Zionism and its political normalization” shortly before the election of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The Michigan letter also signaled that even beyond the state, a sizable cohort of Jews are trying to state their principles amid shifting faultlines in the Democratic Party.
The organizers of Nonnegotiable are undeterred by the party’s silence. They are seeking a new national platform for liberal Zionist Jews to assert their priorities in politics.
“I do think it’s a template for a national model,” Rabbi Aaron Starr, one of Nonnegotiable’s co-founders, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “I’m certainly looking beyond this election. In two years there will be a presidential election, and another slate of candidates for elected office.”
Starr, of the Conservative Congregation Shaarey Zedek in Southfield, a Detroit suburb, said Nonnegotiable’s biggest goal was to “name the priorities that were most core to mainstream American Jews.” He believes they have accomplished that.
As Israel seems sure to remain a hot-button topic for the American electorate in the 2028 presidential race, Starr sees the need for Jews to assert their priorities as urgent.
“Everyone recognizes the growing extremism among political parties and politicians these days,” he said. “Everybody, and especially rabbis, recognizes that extremists could pop up in their own districts and their own states. So they want a forum to be able to communicate ways by which we reject extremism.”
National spotlight
Nonnegotiable’s organizers told JTA they have gathered 1,900, mostly anonymous, signatures to date within Michigan. That figure would be larger than the combined totals of named Michigan Jews who have signed open letters pledging to vote for El-Sayed (1,000) and Rogers (560).
Nationally, the organization says 4,560 people have signed the petition, including the rabbis from out of state who have joined up with the movement in its final days. The other clergy were sourced from rabbinical networks on social media, and come from 34 different states and Washington, D.C. A good chunk of them serve active congregations.
Many are from liberal or swing states, including Rabbi Samuel Stern of Temple Beth Sholom in Topeka, Kansas, where another close Senate race is unfolding. Stern told JTA he signed in order to call out “the anti-Zionist hatred that we see coming out of different political sides and candidates.”
For the rabbis on the letter, El-Sayed’s rhetoric in Michigan looms large in their states, too — in some cases, larger even than more local antisemitism controversies.
At a recent rally in Kansas, President Donald Trump used the term “Shylock,” widely considered to be an antisemitic slur, when referring to a controversy involving the GOP incumbent senator suing patients with medical debt.
Stern, though, said that his Kansas congregation was generally more concerned about El-Sayed’s rhetoric on Israel several states away than Trump’s remarks closer to home.
“It really didn’t play that much here,” the rabbi said, of Trump’s comment. “I don’t know what that means for us, or for any of the other Jewish communities, but it wasn’t as prevalent here. We’ve heard more about what Dr. El-Sayed has said, his anti-Zionism, and been more concerned about that, than about the offhand comment by President Trump.”
Nonnegotiable has also expanded onto college campuses, with an organizing campaign that has quickly formed at the University of Michigan. Around two dozen Jewish students have publicly added their names to the letter.
“I really resonated with what Nonnegotiable stands for,” student organizer Jacob Reich, who is involved in various Democratic Party initiatives on and off campus, told JTA. “I felt torn between both my Jewish identity and my identity as a Democrat.”
Among Reich’s biggest concerns about El-Sayed, he said, was the candidate’s widely criticized “hurt people hurt people” remark made after a March attack on the state’s Temple Israel. The attacker’s family members were killed in Lebanon in an Israeli strike.
El-Sayed has since apologized for those comments, and his campaign has sent mailers to Jewish households in which he pledges to fight antisemitism. Reich said he appreciated the letter, but added, “I don’t think it went far enough to address a lot of the missteps that he’s taken.”
Whose nonnegotiables?
Rabbis friendlier with El-Sayed have argued the movement is ineffective at messaging; could boost Republican policies most Jews strongly oppose; and ignores ways in which the candidate has sought to improve his relations with Jews.
Some have aired those grievances to the movement’s leaders directly.
“Nonnegotiable describes itself as an invitation rather than an ultimatum,” Rabbi Alana Alpert, of Detroit-area Congregation T’chiyah, wrote privately to the campaign’s organizers in an Oct. 8 letter. “It has had the opposite effect, driving a wedge between the campaign and Jewish interests.”
In her previously unpublicized letter, which she recently shared with JTA, Alpert compared Nonnegotiable to Uncommitted, the 2024 activist campaign in Michigan that sought to pressure then-President Joe Biden on Gaza by withholding primary votes for him. The Uncommitted movement later refused to endorse replacement nominee Kamala Harris. Trump went on to win Michigan, and the general election.
The two campaigns used “similar language,” Alpert wrote. She told her fellow rabbis that they were now “dealing with the choices, coalitions, and consequences of an actual general election with far-reaching implications.”
Rabbi Nate DeGroot, who heads the progressive Shalom Center and serves two Michigan synagogues, laid out 10 alternative “nonnegotiables” of his own that he argues “Michigan Jews care just as much about.”
In an essay shared with JTA in advance of its publication, DeGroot’s own nonnegotiables include “fierce condemnation of Christian nationalism”; support for abortion rights and trans rights; and a “commitment to beating swords into plowshares,” a phrase originating in the bible that DeGroot said should also apply to opposing the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran.
Rogers would fail to meet those criteria, DeGroot wrote. Both he and Alpert are supporters of Michigan Jews for Democracy, an ad-hoc group organizing for El-Sayed.
One argument Nonnegotiable’s critics have made is that the movement has had the net effect of benefitting Rogers, who has made an aggressive play for the Jewish vote while employing campaign language about the Muslim Brotherhood that many have argued embraces Islamophobic tropes.
Organizers have expressly denied that their cause is partisan, though some of the big names who signed the Nonnegotiable letter have since cast their ballots for Rogers.
At a recent Republican Jewish Coalition event staged for Rogers, some speakers directly referenced El-Sayed’s refusal to engage with Nonnegotiable as part of the reason not to vote for him.
“When rabbis and Jewish leaders within El-Sayed’s own party came to him with five basic, nonnegotiable commitments, fundamental principles of Jewish safety, identity, and self-determination, they asked him to affirm these commitments clearly and unequivocally,” Lauren Slutsky, a parent of a Temple Israel preschooler, told the crowd. “Weeks later, we’re still waiting.”
She argued, “If a candidate cannot clearly say that Jewish safety, including the safety of Zionist Jews, is nonnegotiable, why should our community or anyone in our community give him our vote?”
Accusations flying
Nonnegotiable’s organizers have denied that their group is affiliated with any Jewish cause but their own. Zioness, which bills itself as a progressive Zionist group, is boosting them.
Yet some Jews see in the movement an echo of more hardline pro-Israel sentiment.
J Street, the national liberal Zionist lobby, seized on a video accidentally posted to Nonnegotiable’s Instagram account that showed the account holder texting with David Victor, a former president of AIPAC and a Michigan resident. The pro-Israel lobbying giant has spent millions against El-Sayed in both the primary and the general election.
The gaffe, J Street vice president of political and digital strategy Tali DeGroot told JTA, was potential evidence that Nonnegotiable’s organizers were coordinating with AIPAC-aligned figures.
“Our fear from the start with Nonnegotiable is that it plays directly into the hands of Republicans who are cynically using the issue of antisemitism for their own political gain,” DeGroot, who has no relation to Nate DeGroot, told JTA. The texting, she insisted, “just validates that fear even more.”
J Street has not formally endorsed El-Sayed, but the lobby is generally supportive of his campaign and is spending against other AIPAC-aligned candidates this midterm cycle. Neither AIPAC nor Victor responded to JTA requests for comment.
Nonnegotiable organizers, however, dispute this account and have expressly denied any involvement from AIPAC in the group.
“If I had been aware of any of the establishment forces being involved in this, or if there was a whiff of partisanship, I would not have gotten involved,” Matt Zerwekh, an initial signer of the letter who leads Temple Emanu-El in the Detroit suburb of Oak Park, told JTA.
Some have even vocally opposed the powerhouse lobby. One of Nonnegotiable’s co-founders, Rabbi Josh Whinston of Ann Arbor’s Temple Beth Emeth, published an op-ed in the Detroit Free Press on Friday condemning AIPAC for quoting him in anti-El-Sayed mailers distributed to Jewish households.
On Sunday afternoon, hours after Stevens’ endorsement of Rogers, Nonnegotiable gathered again on Zoom with guests including Zionist pundit Hen Mazzig and Michigan U.S. Rep. Hillary Scholten.
At the exact same moment as the call, pro-Israel congressional candidate Jeremy Moss was joining a cohort of Democrats castigating Stevens for her endorsement. Nonnegotiable leaders saw it differently: Starr praised Stevens for her “bravery.”
Others, such as Scholten, didn’t raise the subject at all. The congresswoman instead praised the U.S.-Israel relationship and the Iron Dome defensive system. “I’m so proud to stand as a friend and ally of our Jewish community right now,” she told those on the call.
The real purpose of the call, though, was for Nonnegotiable to suggest that Jews could write in a candidate instead of voting for either nominee.
Their top write-in pick: Emma Lazarus, the 19th-century Jewish poet best known for having her work engraved on the Statue of Liberty.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post These Michigan rabbis couldn’t get El-Sayed’s attention. Now they’re going national. appeared first on The Forward.
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Ohio Senate race between Israel supporters becomes proxy battle for AIPAC versus J Street
(JTA) — A tight race in Ohio may play a pivotal role in determining which party controls the U.S. Senate, with the two campaigns serving as a proxy battleground for two Israel lobbying groups with different ideologies.
While Republican Sen. Jon Husted is technically the incumbent, in the eyes of many voters, so is Democrat Sherrod Brown. Husted was appointed by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine to fill the seat vacated by JD Vance when he became vice president in January 2025. He is now running to fulfill the remaining two years of that term. Brown, meanwhile, served three terms in the Senate before losing Ohio’s other Senate seat to Republican Bernie Moreno in 2024.
In the background of this close race are two pro-Israel lobbying forces: the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerful pro-Israel lobby supporting Husted, and the liberal J Street, a frequent critic of the Israeli government that backs Brown.
For this general election cycle, Husted has earned more than $544,000 in individual contributions earmarked for him through AIPAC, according to FEC filings. During the May special primary election, he amassed more than $306,000 in such contributions.
Husted received a direct $5,000 contribution from AIPAC’s political action committee in April, according to both FEC filings and a federal lobby disclosure. Another $5,000 in February was earmarked through AIPAC, meaning that the lobby forwarded a third party’s contribution to the campaign. Husted also received a $5,000 donation from the Republican Jewish Coalition PAC.
Asked why Husted received AIPAC’s backing, Deryn Sousa, a spokesperson for the organization, wrote that “Husted is endorsed because of his support of the U.S.-Israel relationship.”
During his short time in the Senate, Husted has voted against measures to block arms sales to Israel and joined efforts to combat antisemitism.
In April, he voted against advancing two resolutions proposed by Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, seeking to restrict sales of certain military equipment – including 1,000-pound bombs and bulldozers – to Israel. That same month, he joined the Senate Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism, and a year before, he questioned university leaders about the safety of Jewish students on campus.
Brown has likewise been a staunch supporter of Israel and Jewish Americans, voting against advancing a previous resolution to restrict arms sales, proposed by Sanders in 2024.
In 2018, Brown sponsored the United States-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act, which would have authorized military assistance for Israel through fiscal year 2028. He also spoke out on behalf of Jewish students amid campus protests in 2024 and warned of the dangers of antisemitism after a 13-year-old was charged with allegedly planning a mass shooting at an Ohio synagogue in 2023.
Brown has been “one of the biggest recipients of J Street bundled funds for this cycle,” according to Jordan Steinberg, a spokesperson for the group. Describing Brown as “a long-time J Street champion,” Steinberg told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the Democrat has received more than $800,000 from supporters of J Street in this race.
The biggest chunk of the funds, Steinberg continued, came via JStreetPAC, which operates as a conduit for individual donors who make contributions to candidates on J Street’s website. These contributions are then reported to the FEC as donations from individuals. The group also has a super PAC, J Street Action Fund, but Steinberg said that most donations come from individuals who contribute through the traditional PAC.
J Street in September announced that it would be stepping up lobbying efforts, investing $3 million to defeat certain Republican candidates backed by AIPAC.
“He is one of the top three recipients of our bundled dollars, and we couldn’t be more invested organizationally in his victory in November,” Steinberg added. “Brown has been a longtime champion of pro-peace, pro-democracy values, and we’re proud to stand with him this cycle.”
Other differences in financing have separated the two rivals, with each campaign accusing the other of linkages to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Brown has run ads slamming Husted for taking more than $116,000 from Ohio billionaire Les Wexner, a financial client of Epstein, with the most recent $3,500 gift occurring in July 2025, according to the Federal Election Commission.
A campaign spokesperson for Husted, Tom Evans, told JTA in a statement that “the Wexners have given to dozens of candidates from both sides of the aisle – including Sherrod Brown.” Evans noted that Husted’s campaign donated all available funds, totaling $34,000, to an anti-human trafficking charity, adding that the senator voted to release the Epstein files.
While Husted did support such legislation passed in November 2025, he supported tabling an amendment requiring disclosure of Epstein file documents to the public in September 2025.
Following Brown’s attack ads, Husted fired back with allegations that his opponent took contributions from people whose names appeared in the Epstein files. Those people included Wexner’s wife Abigail, former Harvard president and U.S. Treasury secretary Larry Summers and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. FEC records show, however, that Brown never took money from Wexner himself.
The Husted campaign has accused Brown of taking more than $150,000 from a dozen people listed in the Epstein files. Evans deemed the Democrat’s ads “hypocritical,” slamming him for sitting on the files while serving in Washington for 32 years.
The Brown campaign did not respond to JTA’s request for comment.
Apart from the clashes over contributions to each campaign, the Ohio Senate race has also included a controversy over a Husted campaign hire. The former staffer, Stephen Woytek, once used a photo of SS soldiers as his Facebook profile picture and added a playlist celebrating Rhodesia, a former white-minority-ruled state often used as a symbol by white nationalists, The Washington Post reported in September. Woytek at the time told the Post that he rejects “the racist and antisemitic ideology the SS and Nazi Germany represented,” adding that although he participates in historical reenactments for educational purposes, he should have “exercised better judgment.”
After the Post contacted the campaign about the posts, Husted reportedly dismissed Woytek.
Following the Post’s report, Ohio Democratic Party leadership said that Jewish and Black community leaders joined hands in condemning the senator “for hiring a Nazi enthusiast as a member of his senior campaign team.”
“Jewish Americans and our allies need to take action to combat the rise of antisemitism and hatred and defend our values,” Adam Rosen, Ohio chapter leader of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said in a statement.
Rosen accused Husted of showing “poor judgment” in hiring Woytek, raising doubts as to whether Jewish Ohioans should trust his judgment “when he can’t choose people for positions of power who aren’t Nazis.”
Evans, Husted’s campaign spokesperson, cited Woytek’s service in the U.S. Army and described him as a student of military history who “routinely reenacts historical battles.”
“While he denies negative intent, his social media activity displays a complete lack of judgement and disregard for its impact on others,” Evans added. He stressed that Husted “demands better of those who represent him,’ noting that the senator “made the immediate decision to part ways.”
Addressing this incident, Josh Kramer, president and CEO at Ohio Jewish Communities, emphasized that “Ohio Jewish Communities has a long history of working constructively with both sides of the local aisle, and we’re fortunate to have relationships with both Senator Husted and former Senator Sherrod Brown.”
“The controversy surrounding the former member of Senator Husted’s campaign is troubling,” Kramer added, noting, however, that “Husted acted to remove the individual once the matter was brought to his attention.”
Overall, Kramer said he believes that “Ohio has demonstrated itself to be a more moderate state, or less open to extremism, than other states.”
Looking at the election from a broader perspective, Ohio Jewish Communities’ Kramer said he was grateful that Ohio’s Jewish community has long worked with both Democrats and Republicans. While he recognized a rising tendency to link antisemitism to partisan politics, Kramer said that this race is “an opportunity for candidates to demonstrate their commitment to the safety and well-being of Ohioans, including the state’s Jewish population.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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