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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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This Jewish family’s toy company challenged Trump’s tariffs. The Supreme Court agreed.
(JTA) — Stephen Woldenberg was in a meeting with his father last Friday, refreshing the Supreme Court’s website, when the news finally came through: Their company had prevailed in its legal challenge to the Trump administration’s tariffs.
“It’s all a bit surreal, I’ll be honest,” said Woldenberg. “It’s very gratifying, though, to see that our case has had an impact and that the Supreme Court ruled and agreed with our position.”
For Woldenberg, who is the fourth generation of his family’s Illinois-based educational toy company Learning Resources, the decision to challenge President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs was rooted in a moral obligation shaped by his family’s Jewish values.
“I think that for us, being Jewish, we felt like we wanted to stand up for what we thought was right, and, you know, not being afraid to take a stand,” said Woldenberg. “I think that that’s part of our identity, and I think that’s a core part of what this case was about. It’s a civil legal challenge, it isn’t political, but we felt like we weren’t going to stand by idly, and I think that’s part of our Jewish identity.”
Learning Resources was founded by Stephen’s grandmother Joan as a spinoff of a company run by her father-in-law Max Woldenberg, who immigrated from Poland as a child in the late 19th century. Joan’s son Rick is CEO, while Stephen and his sister both have high-level executive roles.
The family, longtime members of a Conservative synagogue in the suburbs of Chicago, has a record of Jewish philanthropy. Rick and his wife have donated to local Jewish organizations as well as to the Center for Jewish Life at Princeton University, his alma mater. Elana, who also graduated from Princeton, founded a Jewish philanthropy fellowship there. And Max Woldenberg’s brother Malcolm was a prominent New Orleans philanthropist for whom the Institute of Southern Jewish Life is named.
It was not philanthropy but Learning Resources’ bottom line that got the family fired up by Trump’s tariffs, which raised import costs for businesses that rely on overseas manufacturing. Trump authorized the tariffs using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, rather than by seeking approval from Congress.
Like many American companies, Learning Resources relies on Chinese factories and workers to make its products, of which perhaps the most widely recognizable are plastic bears used for counting practice that are staples of many preschool classrooms.
Stephen Woldenberg said that in 2025, after the tariffs were imposed, Learning Resources paid over $10 million in tariff-related taxes, compared to $2 million the year before.
“After ‘liberation day,’ tariff rates spiked up to 145%, which effectively was like an embargo on Chinese goods,” said Woldenberg. “We decided to take action. We aren’t really a company that likes to stand by idly. We weren’t willing to let a single politician sink the ship.”
Learning Resources’ legal battle culminated in a decisive Supreme Court victory, and a notable loss for Trump, who heavily criticized the decision during his State of the Union speech Tuesday night.
In his decision, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the “IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs.” The Supreme Court agreed 6-3 that the tariffs exceeded the law.
“The president asserts the extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration, and scope,” Roberts wrote in his opinion. “In light of the breadth, history, and constitutional context of that asserted authority, he must identify clear congressional authorization to exercise it.”
Among the estimated 1,000 lawsuits filed against the tariffs, which ultimately collected over $130 billion for the United States, were others filed by Jewish-owned companies.
Rebecca Melsky, a former a Jewish day school teacher, was among the first to legally challenge the emergency tariffs last April through her children’s apparel brand Princess Awesome, which she co-founded to defy “gender stereotypes” in kids clothing.
In 2025, Melsky said Princess Awesome had paid over $30,000 in additional tariffs, a cost she said had hit her small business hard.
“We’re a very small company — that money came out of our paychecks,” said Melsky. “We pulled back on our production. We did not make as much stuff last year as we normally do, which we are feeling this year, as we start the year with less inventory.”
After Melsky and her co-founder, Eva St. Clair, took to Facebook to explain the costs of Trump’s tariffs to their customers last April, the pair were approached by the Pacific Legal Foundation, which represented them in federal court. (Princess Awesome’s lawsuit was put on hold pending the Learning Resources decision.)
For Melsky, the choice to take on Trump’s tariffs in court was also inspired in part by her own Jewish values.
“Even if something feels scary, even if you don’t necessarily know if it’s going to do something, standing up for what is right, is, like, we have a moral and ethical obligation to do that, even if that means taking a risk,” said Melsky. “And thankfully, my business partner, her Catholic faith brought her to the same place, too.”
Following the Supreme Court’s ruling last Friday, Melsky and St. Clair took to Facebook again, posting a video shouting “we won!”
But the battle is not over for Melsky, Woldenberg or any of the other businesses that have sued the government over Trump’s tariffs. Following the ruling, Trump swiftly vowed to impose more tariffs, including a temporary 10% global import duty.
While the Trump administration said during the Supreme Court battle that suing parties would “assuredly receive payment” if they lost, the court did not stipulate in its decision what would happen to the tariffs that had already been collected.
As companies seek refunds following the decision, they are likely to be met by a lengthy legal process, with Trump already dismissing calls for refunds as a process that would take “years.”
“The government, the administration, did not have a hard time taking the money, they found that to be quite easy, and so they should be able to turn around and send it right back to us,” said Woldenberg. “They know what everybody paid, and they know how to get the money.”
Melsky said that she felt her company was now in “limbo,” awaiting the Trump administration’s next move.
“It feels a little bit less chaotic, but we don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, and certainly we have no idea what will happen with refunds and if they are approved, when that money would come,” said Melsky.
Despite the uncertainty, Woldenberg said he hoped his family’s victory would “inspire” others that they too can make a difference.
“It doesn’t matter the size of the company or the notoriety of the individual,” said Woldenberg. “The American system is set up in a way where anyone can make a difference, anybody can have an impact.”
The post This Jewish family’s toy company challenged Trump’s tariffs. The Supreme Court agreed. appeared first on The Forward.
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A compelling horror series from Israel — even if you don’t like horror movies
In general, I steer clear of genre entertainment. For me, films awash in horror and the paranormal are gory, frightening and in the end relentlessly dull — a lethal combination.
But to my surprise, The Malevolent Bride, an Israeli horror series now streaming on Chaiflicks, is so compelling and has such page-turning momentum that I had to know what happened next.
Set in Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox community, the series — which is the brainchild of Noah Stollman, and director Oded Davidoff, creators of, respectively, Fauda and The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem — recounts a wave of inexplicable, blood–curdling crimes. But beyond its mystery and thriller elements, the picture embodies an amalgam of Kabbalah, feminism, humanism, and, yes, even quantum field theory.
Here, the line between the scientific world and Jewish mysticism, each requiring its own brand of blind faith, is blurred. Interwoven throughout are themes related to the crippling power of religion and the cost of repressed sexuality that comes in its wake. Like many horror flicks, it has its share of high camp comedy too.
The characters (well, at least the secular ones) are relatable and appealing. The lead, Tom Avni playing Be’er Dov, a physicist, is sympathetic and appealing (easy to look at too). An ex-Hasid who has shed all religion, he lives openly with his equally non-religious doctor girlfriend. Be-er also advocates for the daughter of a Hasid. He’s a feminist too.
The performances are uniformly superb. Even the grotesque moments, and there are some, work entertainingly, if not credibly, within the parameters of the genre’s over-the-top sensibility, which can at times recall The Exorcist.
The series begins with the wedding night of a Hasidic couple — the terrified virgin bride, swathed in white, is soon to be deflowered by a man she’s met perhaps twice. Moments later, we see her clutching shards of glass, her hand bloodied, her gown covered in blood as she charges towards the groom; his corpse is on the floor.
Later in jail, eyes wild, and demonically possessed, she utters a sing-songy phrase, “oxyn, oxyn” that becomes the first part of a satanic refrain that more and more Hasidic women spew forth as they too are overtaken by a curse. Dybbuk imagery is evoked. Violent atrocities ensue.
Giovanni, a police officer (convincingly played by Hisham Suliman), uncovers evidence that connects Be’er to each of these women who owns a book, presumably given to them by Be’er. His name, in each case, appears on its pages as its original owner. The book in question is about Raizel, an archangel out of the Kabbalah who has magical knowledge and powers. Sketches of diabolical figures and illegible writings are scribbled across its pages and in its margins.
Be’er insists he knows none of these women. Nonetheless, with his career at risk, he realizes he must uncover the truth to save his reputation. Through flashbacks, we learn that as a young Yeshiva student he was drawn to the Kabbalah and had a clandestine and shockingly forbidden affair with a Hasidic girl named Yedidia to whom he did indeed gift the book.
At the same time, Dr. Malki Price (Leeox Levy), an Orthodox clinical psychologist who heads a mental health facility for deeply troubled girls, is also grappling with the growing menace. Some of her own patients have channeled the free-floating demon, leading to murder, suicide and terrifying occult acts.
Be’er and Malki join forces in order to track down Yedidia who, for reasons that are not entirely clear, seems to be the origin of this epidemic of violence and mysticism. Levy brings an understated compassion to her role that is riveting to watch.
Malki, we later learn, is a transgender woman as is Levy in her first major film role, which reinforces the series’ themes of tolerance and mutual respect. The Jewish mysticism with its scary folkloric and mythic warnings and taboos underscores the series’ embrace of sexuality and the fluidity of gender identity. After all, in the Kabbalah tradition, the Messiah will be both male and female.
Along their journey, Be’er and Malki meet an array of great characters and despite their differences grow increasingly attached to one another. The final romantic scene between Be’er and Malki is simultaneously unnerving, comic, and unexpected, though it shouldn’t be. Yet another hallmark of an original fun series.
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Why was Tucker Carlson pushing for DNA testing for Jews? What to know about the ‘Khazar’ theory that antisemites can’t shake.
(JTA) — During Tucker Carlson’s interview last week with Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, both men made considerable waves with their takes on history and theology.
Huckabee sparked a diplomatic row by citing the Bible to argue that Israel had a divine right to claim all of the Middle East — even though he didn’t back doing so politically.
But Carlson’s own interpretation of Israeli sovereignty was also notable, as the far-right pundit insisted that Israelis should undergo genetic testing to determine if they have a rightful claim to the land.
“Why don’t we do genetic testing on everybody in the land and find out who Abram’s descendants are?” Carlson asked Huckabee at one point, using the name Abraham used before he made a covenant with God to become the first Jew. “It’s really simple. We’ve cracked the human genome. We can do that. Why don’t we do that?”
At another point, Carlson singled out Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu specifically as an illegitimate Israeli.
“What you’re saying is that certain people have a title to a highly contested region. They own it, in some deep sense,” he told Huckabee. “So I think it’s fair to ask, who are they, and how do we know? So the current prime minister’s ancestors weren’t from here within recorded history. He has no deed. Bibi Netanyahu, on one side, his family’s from Poland, they’re from Eastern Europe. So how do we know he has a connection to the people who God promised the land to?”
The line of questioning made little sense to many Jewish listeners, who understand Judaism as a blend of religion, ethnicity and community in which converts have always been accepted. For Jewish listeners, too, the idea of tracing bloodlines is often associated with the Nazis, who chose their victims based on how many Jewish ancestors they had.
But both Carlson’s critics, and supporters across the ideological spectrum who have agreed with his views on Israel, understood what he was getting at. They identified his line of questioning as a variation on the “Khazar theory”: the belief that Ashkenazi Jews, like Netanyahu, are genetically descended from a Turkic minority that converted to Judaism in the Middle Ages rather than from the 12 tribes of Israel.
“The people currently occupying Israel are Khazarian Turks,” far-right pundit Candace Owens, a promoter of many antisemitic conspiracy theories, wrote on X.
“He has ZERO ancestral connection to the land. He’s Polish,” the far-left influencer Shaun King wrote on X about Netanyahu in praise of Carlson’s interview. “His real last name is Mileikowsky.”
The theories as to why the Khazars, who were a real people, would have converted en masse to Judaism have varied according to the teller; one tale holds that a Khazar royal held a debate between representatives of Judaism, Islam and Christianity to hold the best religion, and Judaism won out. But no matter how it happened, the theory goes, Jews who trace their genetics to Eastern Europe should not be considered rightful heirs of Israel, and should instead claim the Caucasus as their ancestral home.
The Khazar theory has a long history but was largely discredited with the advent of DNA analysis. Yet it has grown in prominence among antisemitic circles since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel and ensuing Gaza war, according to research by the Anti-Defamation League.
“Antisemites suggest that if Jews are descended from people not native to Israel (i.e., Khazars), then they have no legitimate claim to the land,” the ADL’s own description of the theory’s popularity notes. “In addition, because Nazis sought to expel Jews and others from their homes in Europe in order to obtain lebensraum (‘living space’) for ‘Aryan’ people, antisemites have argued that Jews are doing the same thing because they have no historic claim to the land of Israel.”
The ADL also notes that, setting aside the validity of the theory, most Israeli Jews are not Ashkenazi but rather trace their roots to North Africa and elsewhere in the Middle East.
The origins of the Khazar theory date back centuries and have always had some promulgation from Jews; Hungarian Jews in the 19th century latched onto the theory, according to researchers. The Khazar theory has also been promoted by some Jewish and Israeli scholars in more recent years, including Arthur Koestler in his 1976 book “The Thirteenth Tribe”; Shlomo Sand, a historian at Tel Aviv University who identifies as “post-Zionist,” in his controversial 2008 book “The Invention of the Jewish People”; and Israeli geneticist Eran Elhaik.
This has further boosted the theory’s seeming validity among proponents: Owens, for example, has cited Sand’s book on X as evidence for the theory.
But such studies are largely refuted by established historical scholarship. “This claim, pardon my chutzpah, is nonsense,” Shaul Stampfer, an emeritus history professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has said about the Khazar theory in college lectures.
In Stampfer’s own research into the Khazars, he said that while there were a few Jews among the Khazars, he has found no genetic links between the ancient Central Asian tribe and modern Ashkenazi Jews (whose own genetics have been thoroughly studied owing to a preponderance of genetic diseases in the population). There are, however, genetic links between Ashkenazi Jews and ancient Palestine, as well as to North Africa, he says.
In addition, there are very few Turkic origins to be found in Yiddish, while there are extensive Latin origins in Yiddish, further boosting evidence of broader Jewish migration to Europe and decreasing the likelihood of mass migration from Turkey.
There are other practical considerations, too, Stampfer told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency this week.
“Take a look at a map,” he wrote in an email. “Even if the Khazars had converted, they would not have dragged themselves to Poland. It is far away and cold in the winter.”
The National Institutes of Health, too, published an extensive genetic study in 2013 that found “no evidence from genome-wide data of a Khazar origin for the Ashkenazi Jews.”
The researchers assembled what they called “the largest data set available to date for assessment of Ashkenazi Jewish genetic origins,” as well as available genome sets from the Caucasus. Their conclusion, the abstract notes, “corroborates the earlier results that Ashkenazi Jews derive their ancestry primarily from populations of the Middle East and Europe, that they possess considerable shared ancestry with other Jewish populations.”
None of the evidence has stopped the Khazar theory from emerging as a lodestar of modern antisemitism, thanks in part to influential right-wing personalities such as Carlson. This is not the first time he has toyed with the idea of genetics testing for Jews, though he previously seemed to be aware that such an ask would carry undesirable connotations.
“In order to determine who’s actually inherited the land, we would have to conduct global genetic testing to award property on the basis of the results,” he texted right-wing filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza months ago, according to D’Souza, who shared the text on a recent podcast. Carlson continued, “Sounds like a Nazi project to me. As a Christian, I reject that.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary any more than it’s necessary to genetically test Indians to make sure their ancestors are from India,” D’Souza, who is Indian-American, responded. “Remember Jews maintained their tribal identity. Very little intermarriage. They didn’t try to convert people, as Christians did.”
D’Souza continued, “Shakespeare’s ‘Merchant of Venice’ conveys the picture very vividly. The Jews don’t mix. So their continuity as a group is generally more secure than virtually any other group.” (“The Merchant of Venice,” which features the Jewish villain Shylock, is generally seen as promoting antisemitic stereotypes.)
Carlson responded by returning to the genetics question — and this time seeming more open to it than when he first called it a Nazi project. “I agree with all that and I admire it. I’m hardly against Jews,” he texted D’Souza. “But if the claim is that Jews have a genetic right to certain pieces of land, it’s going to be necessary to do genetic testing.”
The broader lurch into conspiratorial thinking on the right, exemplified by the views on the Jews and Israel espoused by Carlson, increasingly has some other conservatives worried about losing control of the narrative.
“The most popular digital content on the Right is now ‘Erika Kirk killed Charlie,’ ‘Epstein was leading a pedophile blackmail ring for the CIA’ and ‘Jews are a diabolical power destroying the world,’” Christopher Rufo, an influential right-wing thought leader who helped orchestrate the larger push against diversity initiatives, warned on X. “In these instances, we need to correct public opinion, rather than cave to it.”
For his part after the Carlson interview, Huckabee accused his interrogator of drawing on a “dangerous conspiracy theory” from “some of the darkest realms of the Internet” for his genetic testing line of questioning.
“I do know that the discredited idea that most Ashkenazi or European Jews descended from the ancient Turkic kingdom of Khazaria is bunk,” Huckabee wrote on X. “It’s also been weaponized by people trying to deligitimize [sic] Jews, to strip them of their history, and to call them ‘imposters’ or ‘fake Jews.’”
Stampfer was hesitant to diagnose why the Khazar theory may be growing in popularity today.
“People who don’t like Jews might be attracted to the idea that this is one more Jewish lie,” he offered. Yet, he added, “Explaining why people believe what they believe is a tough business.”
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