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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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The post Why a liberal Zionist rabbi isn’t taking to the streets over Israel’s judicial reform plan appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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California progressive Wahab defeats AIPAC-backed Hernandez in close race
(JTA) — California progressive Aisha Wahab defeated AIPAC-backed moderate Melissa Hernandez in a congressional runoff this week, capping off a contest that had become unexpectedly tight after the pro-Israel lobby entered the fray.
The Associated Press called the race between the Democrats — who were vying to replace a disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell — a full two days after polls closed, when Wahab secured 53.1% of votes to Hernandez’s 46.9%, with 95% of ballots tallied. The gap between them grew by four percentage points from Tuesday evening, when Wahab had held a narrow 51% lead to Hernandez’s 49%.
“We stayed focused on the people, and I will fight for this district that raised me,” Wahab said in a Thursday statement, noting her journey “from foster care to Congress” in her East Bay community.
Although Wahab ended up victorious, the narrow initial margin on Tuesday shocked California’s 14th District, given that she had secured a double-digit lead in preliminary races two months ago.
But in the past few weeks, an unforeseen variable appeared to influence the trajectories of the two campaigns: a massive spending push from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee aimed at turning the tides for Hernandez.
Since the beginning of August alone, AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project, and other affiliated groups spent more than $2.5 million on both boosting Hernandez and denigrating Wahab with negative ads and mailers, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
“This was not a landslide for Wahab by any means,” local Democratic strategist Noah Finneburgh, who is not affiliated with either candidate, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“They narrowed the gap for sure,” Finneburgh added, referring to AIPAC. “They spent millions of dollars attacking Wahab very aggressively.”
These attacks, he explained, did not involve Israel and instead focused on divisive issues for the Bay Area, such as public safety and protecting kids.
“Negative advertising with a persuasive message can be very effective,” Finneburgh said.
In her Thursday night statement, Wahab declared that her “district cannot be bought,” describing the race as “one of the ugliest, most expensive elections we’ve ever seen.”
Prior to this influx of cash and related ads, neither AIPAC nor Israel had played a significant role in this short-lived race — which began in April following Swalwell’s resignation over allegations of sexual assault.
When the district held a special primary to seek Swalwell’s replacement on June 16, Wahab and Hernandez finished as the top-two candidates and moved on to this week’s special general runoff election.
California primaries are “nonpartisan” or “top-two” races, in which the two highest ranking candidates move on to the general election, irrespective of their parties. The top-two in this case were both Democrats, like Swalwell, in a district that the Cook Political Report deems solidly blue.
Even though Wahab will now finish the remainder of Swalwell’s term, she will have to compete with Hernandez again in the November general election for a full term that begins on January 3, 2027.
In a June 16 special primary that preceded this week’s runoff, there was still a massive gap between the two candidates, with Wahab accruing 42.8% of the votes, compared to Hernandez’s 16.8%. A separate primary for the November race, which occurred two weeks earlier, placed Wahab at 38.3% and Hernandez at 17.2%.
Wahab, who will be the first Afghan American in Congress, has focused on affordability, civil rights, education and climate change. Her campaign calls for an end to wars and “prolonged occupations” but only specifically calls out U.S. military activity in “Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, and elsewhere.”
Though Wahab has been critical of Israel and its operations in Gaza, she has not been as vocal about the issue as many other progressive colleagues nationwide. She responded “yes” when asked if Israel was committing genocide in a primary debate, but she didn’t include Israel or Gaza in her campaign priorities.
During a recent appearance on far-right influencer Hasan Piker’s livestream, Wahab acknowledged that “it’s not a zero-sum game in the Middle East,” adding that “we can care for all people.” She also referenced a resolution she introduced last year in the California legislature, pushing for a ceasefire in Gaza but also condemning Hamas and demanding the release of the hostages.
“We talk about both Palestinians and the Israeli victims there,” Wahab told Piker. “We talk about holding the perpetrators accountable from both sides.”
Asked if she was in favor of “ending all U.S. aid to Israel,” she responded “yes,” while stressing that “humanitarian aid is important to me, too.”
Wahab has earned the backing of multiple labor unions, the California Democratic Party and Our Revolution, the group formed by Sen. Bernie Sanders to advance the progressive movement. The liberal pro-Israel group J Street also recently invested $108,000 in her campaign, according to the FEC. American Priorities, a pro-Palestinian PAC, also spent at least $200,000 on supporting her.
Hernandez has received endorsements from several police and fire unions, as well as Democratic Jewish Reps. Lois Frankel of Florida and Brad Schneider of Illinois.
Come November, Hernandez will gain one additional asset. Due to statewide redistricting, the 14th District will gain about 26,000 new voters from Dublin, where Hernandez previously served as mayor, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
But Finneburgh said he believes that Hernandez has only a minimal chance of winning that race, especially because Wahab will be heading into that election as an incumbent.
He also suggested that if “she plays her card right,” Wahab could even take some endorsements away from Hernandez.
“There’s going to be people who are going to probably move over from the Hernandez camp and back her,” Finneburgh added. “It’s going to be hard to unseat her.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post California progressive Wahab defeats AIPAC-backed Hernandez in close race appeared first on The Forward.
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Why an anti-Israel DSA member bested Alex Vindman in a Florida Senate primary
(JTA) — When Democratic socialist Angie Nixon, an ardent critic of Israel, secured a surprise win in Florida’s U.S. Senate Democratic primary Tuesday over Jewish former Soviet refugee Alex Vindman, pro-Israel advocates expressed alarm that even in the South, Democratic momentum seems to be shifting toward the party’s farthest-left flank.
Nixon is expected to face an uphill battle against her GOP competitor Ashley Moody. Given Florida’s status as a red state, Moody is likely to retain the seat, which she won last year after Marco Rubio, also a Republican, stepped down to become U.S. secretary of state. She and Nixon will vie to complete the last two years of that term, in a state that hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate since 2019. The Cook Political Report currently rates the race as “solid” Republican.
Nixon’s triumph in the primary, however, marks the first democratic socialist victory in a Senate contest this year, with all other democratic socialist wins in federal elections occurring in House races. She won over establishment favorite and Israel supporter Vindman, who dominated the spending game and was widely predicted to win the nomination.
Her victory also comes as other candidates on the left flank of the party have claimed the Senate nomination in Maine, Michigan and Minnesota. Florida is the first red state to have gone with a Senate candidate this far to the left, and it raises the question of why Nixon prevailed and what it says about the larger dynamics among Democratic voters. But analysts caution that Nixon’s win may be more connected to local political dynamics, including the miscalculations by Vindman and his staff, than to the country as a whole.
“They did not take her candidacy seriously,” Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Emphasizing that Vindman and his team members “are certainly kicking themselves,” Jewett stressed that while Nixon had wanted a debate, her opponent had refused.
“I don’t know that he knew what he was getting into,” added Jacob Perry, a Democratic strategist who had at one point been in discussions to join Vindman’s campaign.
Vindman, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant-colonel, served on the White House’s National Security Council and was influential in Trump’s first impeachment. Born in Kyiv, he left the former Soviet Union for the U.S. as a refugee with his father and siblings in 1979.
One obstacle that Vindman faced in this race, according to Perry, was his newcomer status in Florida. Having moved to the Sunshine State just three years ago, after retiring from the Army, Vindman was unfamiliar with its political and cultural dynamics, he added.
“He knows about as much about Florida politics as I know about Ukrainian politics,” Perry said.
Reflecting on the loss on Tuesday night, Vindman credited Nixon for her “strong campaign” against him, noting in a post on X that he “will be standing by her side in the fight against Ashley Moody.”
“Who would’ve ever thought that a Jewish refugee would make it to the U.S. Army, to the White House, and to becoming a candidate for the U.S. Senate,” he added.
President Donald Trump celebrated Vindman’s defeat on Wednesday, describing the outcome on Truth Social as “the most gratifying loss last night” and calling Vindman “a real treasonous creep.”
The president lashed out about Vindman’s decision to testify in Congress over concerns about a Trump request from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate former President Joe Biden. Trump described the conversation as a “routinely recorded” and “perfect call,” stressing that he was “completely innocent.”
“Vindman should be prosecuted for what he did,” added Trump, who also described Vindman’s opponent, Nixon, as “a radical left lunatic” who will face a “certain defeat at the hands of Ashley Moody.”
Nixon on Tuesday thanked Vindman for his service and for his “efforts to make sure that Florida voters know what is going on right now is not normal in Washington, D.C.”
“I look forward to working with Lieutenant Colonel Vindman and others to bring the people of Florida together,” she said.
Nixon, a state lawmaker from Jacksonville, has been an outspoken voice against Florida Republican efforts to redistrict congressional voting boundaries, which will likely result in fewer Democratic seats in the U.S. House.
Although Nixon joined the Democratic Socialists of America this year, she didn’t earn the group’s endorsement. She did, however, gain the support of young Florida progressives, as well as Michigan U.S. House Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who are top DSA voices and Israel detractors. Nixon spoke at a controversial rally on Friday in Fort Lauderdale, where Tlaib was a featured guest, the Miami Herald reported.
Regarding Nixon’s lack of DSA endorsement, Politico said it had obtained an internal Discord chat that had raised concerns about Nixon being “opportunistic” because she joined DSA only recently. At the time, a DSA spokesperson explained that the message came from a specific DSA chapter and that Nixon hadn’t filed an endorsement request. The group did not immediately respond to a request from JTA for further comment.
Nixon has repeatedly accused Israel of committing genocide and criticized Vindman for staying silent on Israel. In Florida’s legislature, she introduced a bill calling for a “de-escalation and ceasefire in the state of Israel and occupied Palestine.” She also voiced support for cutting U.S. aid for the Jewish state and declared that she doesn’t take AIPAC money.
“Together we went up against a political establishment against millions of dollars of out of state spending,” Nixon said on Tuesday. “We were outspent 16 to one, and we won.”
Over the course of the primary race, Nixon brought in less than $1 million, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Vindman, on the other hand, amassed more than $16 million, a sizable sum in a conservative-leaning state. Records available thus far do not link these funds to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, while the Track AIPAC website describes Vindman as “pro-Israel” but lists his “Israel lobby total” as “TBD.”
Regardless of the funding sources, Jewett pointed out that Vindman still has millions of dollars left in his campaign chest.
“He had millions left that he could have spent buying more ads or developing a better ground game, recruiting more volunteers to go knock on doors,” Jewett said.
The ads he did run focused less on Nixon and more on introducing himself and attacking Moody, with “the presumption that he was going to win,” Jewett added.
Meanwhile, Perry observed that Vindman’s social media photos throughout the campaign usually featured meetings with people who “look like him.” These groups, he explained, often included veterans who weren’t registered Democrats and who weren’t “going to vote for him in a primary.”
Nixon, on the other hand, was capitalizing on her skills as a community organizer and was out hustling, Perry added.
“Angie understood the Democratic primary voter better than Alex or his team,” he said.
Stephen Sussman, a professor of public administration at Barry University, said he was unsurprised that Nixon ended up beating Vindman because her platforms “resonated with the progressive left and the Democrats.”
Her messages, Sussman added, struck a chord “with the Democrats on the ground,” while Vindman had the reputation of being “more of a national figure.”
Jewett echoed these sentiments, noting that the reason political scientists had “called him the frontrunner was because of his national notoriety and name recognition, and his role in bringing Trump to the first impeachment.”
In a general election, that national notoriety could have given him a slight advantage. Swing voters, Jewett explained, might have appreciated his overall moderate agenda, his military vet status, his pro-Israel stances and the fact that he still owns a weapon.
While recognizing that Vindman could have had “a little better chance than Nixon” in the general election, Jewett stressed that Moody is the “clearly the favorite” in this red state.
“She’s always a top vote-getter,” Perry added. “There’s nothing really particularly interesting or that stands out about her. But she somehow brings in the votes.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Why an anti-Israel DSA member bested Alex Vindman in a Florida Senate primary appeared first on The Forward.
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A Jewish federation had big plans for a community campus. Then the money ran out.
(JTA) — When the Jewish federation in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, laid off its entire support staff earlier this month, the move didn’t come as a surprise. Instead, it felt like an inevitable next step in an inexorable trajectory of decline that has unfolded in public over the course of months, upending the infrastructure that had long organized Jewish communal life in the state capital.
The slow-rolling collapse in Harrisburg, which has roughly 9,000 Jews in the city area, has included the closure of programs, the displacement of Jewish institutions and the planned sale of the Alexander Grass Campus for Jewish Life, which was purchased by the federation for $4.5 million in 2022 and envisioned as a hub for Jewish life in central Pennsylvania.
The downfall has also featured an unusual intervention by Jewish Federations of North America, the umbrella organization for 141 local federations that usually work highly independently. JFNA dispatched a former federation leader to help the Harrisburg Federation make hard financial decisions as it became clear its situation was not sustainable.
“While well-intentioned, there were clearly mistakes made that have set back Jewish life in Harrisburg and caused distress and division,” JFNA’s president and CEO, Eric Fingerhut, wrote in a letter to the community in April, in which he called the local federation’s business model “not viable.”
At the time, Fingerhut expressed optimism that the situation could turn around, writing, “Despite all that has transpired in recent years, I am confident the members of the Greater Harrisburg community can come together to repair what has been broken and build a bright future.”
Four months later, that optimism is being tested as Harrisburg’s Jewish residents have watched core functions of the local federation evaporate.
Gila Ogle, the head of the Silver Academy, a Jewish day school in Harrisburg, said there was a “deep desire to ensure a vibrant future for Jewish life in Harrisburg,” but lamented that there is no longer a local Jewish federation to support it.
“What people are saying is, ‘Well, now what’s our opportunity? How can we come together?’” she said.
The Silver Academy officially learned in June that it could no longer be housed in the Grass Campus, Ogle said. The school will open this fall in the educational wing of Beth El Temple, a Conservative synagogue in Harrisburg. The synagogue is also hosting senior programs previously operated by the JCC.
Ogle said the school had seen a small decline in enrollment over the past year, a trend she attributed to the “unsettlingness of the whole situation” for families.
“Families have a lot of concerns, and I think that’s fair,” Ogle said. “We’ve really done our best to communicate transparently and keep families looped in and part of the process, but it is hard.”
The Silver Academy was not the only institution housed on the Grass Campus that was hurt by the Harrisburg federation’s downfall.
When Rebecca Anzel first heard about the looming closure of her 3-year-old daughter’s preschool in April, she was “shocked and confused.” Her daughter attended the Brenner Family Early Learning Center, which shut down on May 1, just over a week after Anzel and other families were informed of its closing. The preschool has no plans for reopening.
“I was devastated for my daughter, because I was worried about what that would do for her development and progression,” Anzel said at the time.
Now, as the federation’s collapse enters its final stages, the institutions it once supported are beginning to chart a future without it.
“It wasn’t that the Harrisburg Jewish community failed; it was that the business construct, the model, was failing and was faulty,” said Marc Terrill, the former head of the Jewish Federation of Baltimore, whom the national organization dispatched to Harrisburg to help the local federation deal with its finances. “They recognized that this isn’t the end to Jewish life in Harrisburg. They want very much a reset in putting together a financial, an organizational, construct that is more similar to what the most thriving Jewish communities in North America have.”
The abrupt closure of the campus comes as Jewish institutions increasingly rethink the necessity of large physical hubs amid rising operational costs and shifting demographics. While closures on the scale of Harrisburg’s are rare, in 2022, the Jewish Federation of New Mexico collapsed following a spate of bitter legal and boardroom battles and a widening financial crisis.
For some in Harrisburg, the federation’s short-lived experiment with the 6.4-acre campus underscored the need to pursue a more flexible model of community building.
Terrill pointed to the purchase of the Grass Campus as the pivotal decision in the federation’s unraveling.
“What’s been called into question is the business model,” said Terrill. “That wrapped around a number of things, but really, the thing that was the large decision that became existential was the purchase of the Grass campus.”
Rabbi Ariana Capptauber, the former leader of Beth El Temple and ex officio member of the Harrisburg federation’s board, said that she hoped the sale of the campus could serve as a turning point for the local Jewish community to reexamine how it organizes and sustains Jewish communal life.
If these developments serve as “a wake-up call” that lead to a more creative use of the community’s resources, Capptauber said, “then it could be really good.”
The financial strain surrounding the campus had been mounting for years.
While the federation had a net income of $2.9 million in 2023, according to public tax filings, in 2024, the organization operated at a $3.3 million deficit.
Sam Levine, a member of the federation’s transition committee, told The Burg in May that expenses to run the campus were “considerably higher than anticipated,” adding that the organization was also “depending on some donations, which unfortunately did not materialize.”
Since the property was purchased, the mortgage for the Alexander Grass Campus had risen to $9 million, Jeanette Krebs, a member of the federation’s transition committee, told Penn Live.
“We are continuing to work through a debt elimination strategy which includes monetizing real estate. Much remains to be seen regarding how things will turn out,” Krebs told JTA in an emailed statement. “I think there are several things that we can all agree on in Harrisburg. Most importantly, that there is a future, people care deeply and we are committed to learning from our mistakes.”
Parents and other stakeholders said they learned little about the looming crisis before programs began shutting down. For Anzel, the lack of communication compounded the distress of losing her daughter’s preschool.
“We have not been given any sort of explanation at all other than major donors fell through, and so now we’re sort of left to try to fill in the blanks ourselves,” Anzel said.
Dana Ray, another parent at the Early Learning Center who organized a letter signed by parents calling on the federation to preserve the center, said that the prevailing sentiment among parents at the school had been “anger and sadness.”
Terrill said that there had also been a divide within the community over the initial move to the Grass Campus.
“There were some people that were very anti-campus,” Terrill said. “They thought that there was a different way to go, and ultimately a decision was made to go, and that had certain implications for it.”
Levine, the transition committee member, told local outlets that the federation is not planning to file for bankruptcy in hopes that local donations and the sale of the campus will help buoy the organization as it faces roughly $500,000 worth of debt on top of a large outstanding mortgage.
For Terrill, the “cautionary tale” of the collapse of the Harrisburg Federation was that there’s “no substitute for building community consensus, effective governance, and effective planning.”
The federation’s transition committee, which was announced by Fingerhut in April, has held roughly 200 conversations and listening sessions with community members as it charts what comes next.
“In a nutshell, the business plan, if you could call it that, was very reactionary,” Terrill said. “What they’re looking to put in place in response to lessons learned is an approach that’s quite different. That is linked to transparency, to financial discipline, to right-sizing, to community input.”
But as the Harrisburg federation begins selling off the campus that was intended to secure its future, local rabbis and parents say the federation’s unraveling has meant the loss of a central part of the local Jewish community’s infrastructure.
“It kind of makes me sad that now we’re sort of forced to leave this really, really lovely, vibrant Jewish community where she’s learning and actually retaining information about Judaism,” Anzel said of her daughter, who is now enrolled in a different preschool. “I don’t know where else she’s going to get that, and I’m really sad.”
Rabbi Tzvia Jasper, the senior rabbi of Temple Ohev Sholom, said that while many were “understandably upset” by the situation, it had also given way to a new sense of community.
“It’s certainly a really devastating time for our community, but in the same vein, I think there’s a lot of anticipation for what this new moment is going to bring,” Jasper said. “With any big change like this, comes the opportunity for creativity and innovation to sort of rethink and restructure the community and find out what the needs truly are.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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