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Why was my Jewish identity so apologetic and humiliating?, Obama speechwriter asks in new book
(JTA) — Sarah Hurwitz calls her first book, “Here All Along,” a “love letter” to Jewish tradition. Describing a journey begun when she worked as a speechwriter at the White House— first for President Barack Obama and later for First Lady Michele Obama — the book was a celebration of her rediscovering Judaism as a thirty-something who grew up with what she describes as a “thin” Jewish identity.
But if that book was sunny, her new book explores the shadows and storm clouds of Jewish belonging. “As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us,” confronts the challenges of being Jewish at a time of rising antisemitism, a polarizing debate over Israel, and pressures and temptations that keep many Jews from appreciating a tradition that belongs to them.
Shifting the focus from personal discovery to a host of contemporary issues, “As a Jew” is both a primer and a polemic, explaining Jewish history, texts and practices in order to counter misinformation and inspire readers.
“We need to know our story. We need to know our history. We need to know our traditions,” she said in an interview on Thursday. “We need to know what we love about being Jews, so that when people come to us and they say, ‘Judaism is violent and vengeful and sexist and has a cruel God and is unspiritual,’ we can say that’s not true.”
The book also draws on her recent training and experience as a hospital chaplain, volunteering on the oncology floor of a hospital in the Washington, D.C. area, where she lives.
Hurwitz, 44, is a graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Law School. She also served as a speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore and in Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. In January, she plans to start training for the rabbinate at the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Beit Midrash for New North American Rabbis.
We spoke at a livestreamed “Folio” event presented by the New York Jewish Week and UJA-Federation of New York. Hurwitz discussed her time in the Obama White House, what she’s learned from meeting with college students struggling with antisemitism, and the challenges of writing a Jewish book in the post-Oct. 7 moment.
Our conversation was edited for length and clarity. To watch the full conversation, go here.
Your first book, “Here All Along,” was about your return to Jewish learning. What hadn’t you said in that first book that you felt compelled to say now? And how does “As a Jew” extend or challenge the earlier journey?
My first very much a love letter to Jewish tradition, and this book is much more of a polemic. That first book really reflected me at the age of 36 rediscovering Jewish tradition, having grown up with this very thin kind of Jewish identity.
In this new book, I began to really ask the question, why did I see so little of Jewish tradition growing up, why did I have to wait until age 36 to actually discover so much of our tradition? Why was my identity so apologetic, so kind of humiliating and, having grown up in a Christian country, how much of my approach to Judaism was really through a Christian lens? This book really dives into those questions at a time of rising antisemitism, where Jews need to start thinking about these things.
What does it mean to be apologetic? How did the Christian lens distort your understanding of Judaism?
I certainly believed that Christianity is a religion of love, but Judaism is really a religion of law. And I really did buy that, that ours is a kind of weedy, legalistic, nitpicky tradition with this angry, vengeful god. I mean, that is just classic Christian anti-Judaism. I also used to think this world is carnal, degraded, inferior, kind of gross, and the goal of spirituality was to transcend them. That is not a central Jewish idea at all. That is not what Jewish spirituality is. If you read the Torah, our core sacred text, you’re going to find a great deal about our bodies, but how we treat them, about really contemplating how they are quite sacred.
You say more than once in your book that you want to “take back the Jewish story.” What does it mean to take back the Jewish story, and from whom or what?
Our story has often been told by others, and you actually see this in this very old story about Jewish power, depravity and conspiracy. You see it in the core story about a group of Jews conspiring to kill Jesus. And you see these themes winding their way through history. That story has been told about Jews for centuries. I want to replace it with our actual story, as told through Jewish texts and traditions.
The alternative you propose, in order for Jews to embrace their own story, is that they embrace the “textline,” which you call “the repository of our Jewish memory, the raw material for the story we tell about who we are.” I am not familiar with “textline” — how does it differ from “text”?
This is actually from [the late Israeli novelist] Amos Oz, and his daughter, historian Fania Oz-Salzberger. They say, “Ours is not a bloodline, it’s a textline.” Jews are racially and ethnically diverse, but our shared DNA, the thing that unites us, is our texts. Sadly, in the early 1800s, as Jews gained citizenship in Europe, there was a decision to assimilate and reshape Judaism to look more like Protestantism — a kind of “Jewish church.” In doing so, we de-emphasized 2,500 years of textual tradition beyond the Torah, which is where much of Jewish wisdom and ritual is found. Reclaiming that textual tradition is critical.
The idea and dilemmas of Jewish power is a theme in your book and incredibly timely, given the debate over Israel’s display of power in Gaza and several other fronts. How does your book approach the moral and spiritual tension of Jews moving from centuries of powerlessness to now having power and a state?
Many Jews today feel distress over the responsibility that comes with power. For 2,000 years, Jews were powerless, blameless victims. The problem with statelessness was that it led to slaughter on a massive scale. Some yearn for that innocence of powerless Jewish life, but I disagree that the cost of millions of deaths was worth it. With power comes moral responsibility. Israel, like all nations, is conceived and maintained in violence. I see the moral complexity, but I do not want to give up the power or the responsibility that comes with it.
After your first book came out, you became a prominent voice in Jewish life. Can you share encounters on the road that shaped your thinking for this book?
First, training as a volunteer hospital chaplain helped me realize the profound, Jewish-centered human experience of accompanying people in moments of illness, grief and death. Second, visiting universities before Oct. 7, 2023, I was stunned by Jewish students asking how I dealt with antisemitism in college. When I said I hadn’t experienced any, the students were shocked. Post-2023, the Gaza war accelerated ugly narratives on social media, which deeply worried me. I also reflected on my first book and realized that the Judaism I grew up with was oddly edited, shaped by our ancestors’ attempts to assimilate for safety — a choice I deeply respect but which left us somewhat “textless.”
How do your chaplaincy experiences relate text to real life?
I volunteer in D.C. hospitals. Being present with people in illness, grief and death is profoundly Jewish. Modern society finds these experiences uncomfortable, but Jewish tradition calls us to accompany mourners, prepare the dead lovingly, and inhabit the thin spaces where life and death blur. This presence, grounded in community, is essential. People often find relief simply in having someone acknowledge reality and speak openly about it.
You started writing this book before Oct. 7. How did the Hamas attacks and the Gaza war influence your writing about peoplehood, empathy and responsibility?
Oct. 7 didn’t change the arguments or themes of my book, but it gave more data points. For decades, Jews in America and Israel lived somewhat disconnected lives. Oct. 7 revealed underlying tensions and reminded us that Jewish identity has always carried conditionality. Some had illusions about a “golden age” of safety in the 1980s and 1990s, but many had faced real threats. The attacks shattered any illusions of security and exposed deeper societal challenges.
You talk about students on campuses being excluded from college clubs and causes because they are Zionist. I found your response intriguing — that Jews again create their own institutions the way they created Jewish hospitals and universities in the early part of the 20th century as a response to exclusion. Do you worry that you are overreacting?
Campuses vary widely. Some departments are excellent; some are hostile. In difficult environments, I advise Jewish students to try dialogue, but if excluded, to create their own spaces — clubs, organizations and initiatives, that are radically inclusive and excellent. Historically, Jews created hospitals, law firms and universities that welcomed anyone committed to excellence and tolerant of Jews. We can do that again. For example, Allison Tombros Korman founded the Red Tent after being ostracized [in the reproductive rights space] for her Zionist beliefs. It funds abortion services for anyone and is inclusive — an inspiring model.
Your book includes a chapter on Israel that aims to counter the accusations that Zionism is colonialist and racist. But you also include criticism of Israel, saying the country is not without its “serious flaws.” How do you navigate the lonely place of being a liberal Zionist today, which I often define as being too Zionist for the liberals and too liberal for many Zionists?
I navigate it like I navigate being an American: I can criticize, feel frustrated and yet remain committed. Israel is the home of 7 million Jewish siblings. Criticism does not mean abandonment. Many confuse ideology with family obligation, but Israel is our family, and we must stand with it while lovingly correcting its errors. This mirrors my commitment to America.
You were active in a Democratic administration and no doubt have seen the evidence of decreasing support for Israel among Democrats. Was that your experience when you worked in the Obama administration? Is that something you had to push back against?
I think people are a little bit confused about when the Obama administration ended, which was 2017. That was well before this 2023 dark turn, you know, it was a pretty normie administration. I don’t remember a single time in the Obama administration where anything negative was said about Israel. It was a great administration to be a Jew. I started first exploring Judaism when I was working in the White House, and my colleagues were so overwhelmingly proud of me, I could not just [believe] the encouragement they gave me. One time I actually ran into the White House chief of staff, a wonderful guy named Denis McDonough, and he asked me what I was doing for the December vacation, and the answer was, I was going to a weeklong silent Jewish meditation retreat. You don’t tell the chief of staff that you’re doing that, but I did, because I didn’t want to lie, and he just could not have been more proud.
I now see, unfortunately, an ideology that’s been on the fringes of the left slowly making its way to the mainstream, and that worries me. I don’t think it is outrageous for Democrats to withhold an occasional shipment of weapons to express displeasure with Israel’s policy, but what worries me is that we are in a bigger environment of a real demonization and delegitimization of Israel.
I’m also really worried about the right. If you look at the data, especially among young men, they’re increasingly antisemitic, increasingly anti-Israel. And what I particularly worry about is that I see President Trump under the guise of fighting antisemitism on campus, engaging in really heavy-handed efforts to defund university campuses. And you can celebrate that. You can say it’s good for Jews, but I disagree, and I also worry about the precedent, that five or 10 years from now, when there is a president with a very different political ideology, who says that “Israel is a terrorist country, Zionism is a terrorist ideology, and I’m going to go and defund every campus that has an active Hillel, because Hillel is a Zionist entity.” We’ve paved that illiberal path, and it’s very easy for someone on the other side to walk down it.
I also really worry about, on the right, the MAGA ideology that says that a small group of powerful, depraved elites is conspiring to harm you and your family, to vaccinate you, to make your kids trans. It’s a very ugly ideology that is the very structure of antisemitism. The leap between elites and Jews is about a centimeter and Tucker Carlson’s made the leap. It’s got millions of followers. A lot of other people are making the leap.
Your books are, as you’ve said, love letters to Jewish tradition. But often observant Jews, here and in Israel, who are deeply steeped in Jewish text and practice, also embrace views that are illiberal and ultra-nationalist. How do you reconcile their embrace of the “textline,” and the illiberal positions they arrive at?
You are talking about the extremists, like [Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, two far-right Israeli cabinet ministers]. I think they are being quite unfaithful to Jewish tradition. Judaism operates in polarities, holding opposing truths: love the stranger yet remember Amalek; humility and self-esteem; compassion with caution. Extremists claim only one pole, but both are essential. Jewish tradition demands wrestling with these tensions.
And yet those tensions are straining communal ties. How do Jews remain responsible for one another when there are such deep disagreements?
Judaism emphasizes the ethic of family. Even if family members espouse objectionable views, we engage them with tochecha — loving, private rebuke — to correct and guide them. Boundaries must exist for safety, but generally, we strive to keep people at the table, engage with them, and educate them.
A lot of Jewish authors are finding that it is difficult since Oct. 7 to promote their books, especially when they lean heavily into Jewish or Israeli content. How are you being received, having written a Jewish book in this time and place?
I only do events in Jewish institutions with a very small number of exceptions, so I haven’t been in any bookstores. I’m not really interested in going to bookstores. I want to go to places that have, frankly, good security and where it will be more than 20 people. I will say I’ve been surprised at how little pushback I’ve gotten to my book, because I thought this was a pretty edgy book. You know, I think my first book was pretty soft — like, “yay Judaism!” The second book is a polemic, and I was worried that I would get real pushback, real criticism, real anger. And yet, from the Jewish world, I’ve had Jewish leaders who are more on the right-wing side of the spectrum politically who like it, and leaders who are on the left-wing part of the spectrum who like it. They’ll tell me, “I see your compassion, and I see that you’re really wrestling with the other side, with those who disagree with you.”
Is there a Jewish text that you kind of live by, or that you really love, or just came across yesterday that really spoke to you this week or in this hour?
There’s so many, but I’ll take one. I’ll just simplify it. In [the Babylonian Talmud, Brachot 5b,] Rabbi A gets sick and then Rabbi B shows up and takes his hands and heals him. But then Rabbi B himself gets sick and Rabbi C shows up and takes Rabbi B’s hand and heals him. And the rabbis studying the story are very confused, because if Rabbi B, who was kind of known as a healer, could heal Rabbi A, then when he got sick himself, why didn’t he just cure himself? Why did he need Rabbi C to come and cure him?
And the answer that they offer is because “the prisoner cannot get himself out of prison.” I just think that’s a really beautiful story about the ways that we become trapped in our own anxiety, fear, anger, loneliness and really do need other people to come and take our hand and kind of pull us out. I thought about this a lot while writing my book. There’s about 80 people in my acknowledgements who read part or all of this book. And that was very important, because as a writer, I cannot get myself out of the prison of my own biases, my own ignorance, my own narrow views, and so many people reached out, took my hand and said, “What you’re writing is wrong,” or “that’s offensive,” or “you don’t know what you’re talking about.” And they said it very nicely. It was so important to me because I could actually step out and learn.
So I love that story. I think it illustrates something profound about what it means to be human.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.
The post Why was my Jewish identity so apologetic and humiliating?, Obama speechwriter asks in new book appeared first on The Forward.
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The Ethan Klein YouTube cheating scandal is reigniting a debate about IDF service
The chronically online are still reeling from — and reveling in — the cheating scandal surrounding Jewish YouTubers Ethan and Hila Klein. And, after Hila’s estranged brother spoke out for the first time this week, commenters have revived a debate over the siblings’ service in the Israel Defense Forces, reflecting the ways in which shifting political trends online can impact even seemingly-unrelated stories.
Hila, an Israeli who met Ethan during his Birthright trip to Israel in 2007, posted a statement accusing Ethan of the affair on Oct. 22. The two had built a joint YouTube career in America garnering millions of subscribers to their show, the H3 Podcast. They married, had three children together and employed around a dozen people on their production crew — one of whom is alleged online to be Klein’s affair partner.
Because of the show’s Israeli connections, the Kleins’ Birthright meet-cute, and the show’s myriad other Jewish connections — the podcast employee allegedly having the affair with Ethan is also Jewish — discussions of Israeli politics have long swirled around the show. Ethan feuded with numerous other YouTubers and internet figures, including Hasan Piker, with whom he used to cohost a podcast, over the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and Israel’s war in Gaza.
In recent years, especially after Oct. 7, with pro-Palestinian sentiments increasingly dominating online, the H3 Podcast’s connection to Israel has become a central part of its identity, and drawn controversy and analysis across the internet from Piker and general viewers. Each time Israel has been brought up on the show the conversations are closely tracked and analyzed in relevant subreddits.
With the Kleins making headlines because of the affair, old Israel discourse has resurfaced surrounding the internet celebrities. Central to it is the question: what level of Israeli military service is forgivable in the eyes of the far left? As Hila routinely came under scrutiny for her service, the Kleins would point to Hila’s brother Moses Hacmon, who also served but has faced far less criticism for doing so.
Hacmon, another internet celebrity, has long been feuding with Hila and Ethan, thanks to his now-wife, infamous YouTuber Trisha Paytas. (Paytas is known for an endless string of controversies including taboo OnlyFans content and saying the n-word while singing along to a rap song, as well as being accused of physically abusing Hacmon.)
Hacmon, who moved to the U.S. in 2002 to launch his art career after finishing his IDF service, met Paytas through Ethan and Hila. The Kleins had just begun having Paytas on their show, which led to Ethan launching a new podcast, Frenemies, with Paytas. Initially, the two couples were close. But the show lasted less than a year and ended in a bitter falling-out over revenue, creative disagreements and family drama, severing ties between the two couples. Now, that conflict is finding new life as fans fight over which siblings’ IDF service was most immoral.
Scrutiny over military service
In defending Hila’s IDF service, Ethan mentioned multiple times that she worked a noncombat desk job and never hurt anyone personally.
The Kleins, who show a vindictive streak against their enemies, also often deflected criticism of Hila by pointing at Hacmon, saying he was an active combatant in the air force, and pointing angry commenters in his direction. (Hacmon and Paytas, while they have drawn their own controversies in the past, have come under less fire as of late and currently are popular in the online ecosystem.)
The Kleins said that they didn’t take issue with Hacmon’s service. But, they said on numerous episodes of the podcast, if people were upset with Hila for serving in the IDF, they should be just as upset with Hacmon.
Until this week, Hacmon hadn’t publicly spoken to or about the Kleins for five years as tensions simmered. He did not invite them to his wedding with Paytas or introduce them to the couple’s three children (who are named — actually — Elvis, Malibu Barbie and Aquaman).
But Hacmon broke his silence on Tuesday to talk about the affair. He said he felt for his sister and that his door was open to her, but added that things the couple had said about him, particularly his military service, were painful lies.
“I never graduated from flight school,” said Hacmon on his podcast with Paytas. “I never was a pilot. I’ve never been in combat. I’ve never hurt anyone. I’ve never shot a gun at anyone.”
This may sound like a petty feud over minor details; either way, both siblings served in the IDF. But it reflects the shifting tides of political trends and viewer favor online.
Pro-Palestinian activism, and harsh criticism of Israel’s army in light of the war in Gaza, has become the mainstream acceptable stance online, and views are so black and white that small details can ruin an online career. Fans, hungry to cancel their enemies, scour the internet for evidence of what they consider to be a sin — for some people, even recommending the wrong book or using the wrong brand of makeup can be an indication of cancellable politics around Israel.
For many influencers, serving in the IDF at all, regardless of role, is enough for online cancellation, but since both of the siblings served, the fight boils down to details, with each sibling attempting to distance themselves from the violence as much as possible to prove that they are not the wrong kind of Jew.
Getting into the weeds on Israel
But a decade ago, this political framework had not yet taken hold of the internet, and Israel was not a pariah online — meaning that the evidence on both Hila and Hacmon’s service can get muddled, as they presented their records differently back when they seemingly thought it sounded cool to be in the army.
An interview with Hacmon published sometime circa 2015 seems to corroborate some of his most recent statement:
“I spent a year and a half in the flight school,” Hacmon said about his service in the air force. “When I left the military after three years I really wanted to catch up for that time.”
But despite his insistence that he did not see combat, in a 2021 episode of Frenemies, long before Oct. 7, Paytas seemed eager to prove her husband had been an active combatant. She bragged about Hacmon’s service in the IDF saying he deactivated bombs in Lebanon and was a “bomb specialist.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” replied Ethan.
“That’s what he did,” yelled Paytas, gesturing to Hacmon who sat silently off screen.
Hila, on the other hand, worked a desk job throughout her service and at one point was, as she described it, a secretary for a brigade that conducted military missions in Ramallah, a major city in the occupied West Bank. One night, unauthorized and acting out of curiosity, she accompanied the brigade on a mission to detain “a terrorist.” This anecdote, which she shared during a 2017 episode of the couple’s podcast, would be used against her time and time again by Piker and various critics after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza.
Viewers commenting on the siblings’ mandatory service had various takeaways.
“I don’t like either of them but you can’t call out one without the other being terrible too,” said one X user. “It’s hypocrisy.”
One commenter, coming to Hila’s defense argued: “Moses was in the IDF, just like Hila. The difference is Hila worked a desk job then asked to go out on the field ONE TIME out of curiosity. Moses worked with bombs and was actually out doing field work, as Trisha loved to brag about.”
While the exact details of each siblings’ service remains disputed, one thing is certain: the casualness with which they once discussed the IDF is gone. What used to be simple background in their personal histories — an experience most Israelis share — has become ammunition in arguments over their alleged complicity in the conflict and an opportunity for moral grandstanding.
All of this is old news, really, though; today, its main effect is drawing attention away from Ethan’s affair. The military debate and disdain many online feel for the IDF — especially in the left wing circles these four worked in — has left little sympathy for the mother of three navigating separation after a devastating affair.
The post The Ethan Klein YouTube cheating scandal is reigniting a debate about IDF service appeared first on The Forward.
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Zoom chat: Memories of Yiddish and Bund gatherings in Melbourne
אין קאַרלטאָן, אַ געגנט אין מעלבורן, האָט מען אַ מאָל געהערט ייִדיש אויף דער גאַס; געגאַנגען אויף בונדישע פֿאַרזאַמלונגען און אין ייִדישן טעאַטער, און געזונגען ייִדישע לידער.
אין אָט דער וועלט איז אויפֿגעוואַקסן דער שרײַבער אַרנאָלד זייבל, אַ קינד פֿון בונדישע אימיגראַנטן פֿון פּוילן. זונטיק, דעם 15טן נאָוועמבער, 7 אַ זייגער אין אָוונט ניו־יאָרקער צײַט, וועט אלי בענעדיקט, פֿון דער ייִדיש־ליגע, פֿירן אַ זום־שמועס מיט זייבלען וועגן זײַנע קינדער־יאָרן אין מעלבורן — דער עיקר, וועגן די ייִדישע שולן, טעאַטערס, לידער און די מענטשן וואָס האָבן געשאַפֿן יענע וועלט.
זיי וועלן אויך אַרומרעדן ווי אַזוי די זכרונות פֿון יענער וועלט לעבן ווײַטער אין זײַנע ביכער.
אַרנאָלד זייבל איז אַ שרײַבער, דערציילער און אַקטיוויסט פֿאַר מענטשנרעכט. זײַנע ביכער, וואָס זענען אויף ענגליש, באַהאַנדלען טעמעס פֿון אימיגראַציע, זכּרון און גלות. צווישן זײַנע באַקאַנטע ביכער געפֿינען זיך „קאַפֿע שעהעריזאַד“ און „בריליאַנטן און אַש“.
די אונטערנעמונג איז פֿרײַ פֿון אָפּצאָל. כּדי זיך צו פֿאַרשרײַבן, גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.
The post Zoom chat: Memories of Yiddish and Bund gatherings in Melbourne appeared first on The Forward.
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At Moontower Minyan, cowboy hats meet kippot
AUSTIN, Texas – In an old churchhouse in Austin, with light streaming through the arched windows, a man wearing a cowboy hat and strumming an acoustic guitar croons the classic Willie Nelson ballad, “I thought about you, Lord.”
Along with his cowboy hat, the singer is also wearing a tallit. His bandmates, plucking at the bass and playing the drums, choose a different type of headcovering: yarmulkes. Welcome to Shabbat at Moontower Minyan, held at a former church turned artist collective.
Rabbi Dan Ain and his wife, poet Alana Joblin Ain, started Moontower Minyan shortly after the Hamas-led attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 — when many Jews in Austin who didn’t have ties to a community sought meaningful ways to express their Judaism and meet others seeking a similar creative outlet.
“We wanted to have experiences where we didn’t feel locked into expressing Judaism in only one monolithic way,” said the rabbi, who moved to Austin from San Francisco at the end of the COVID pandemic. “We wanted to experience the diversity of what it could be in this town in order to be more human and more alive.”
In a population of more than 2.5 million in the greater Austin area, more than 62,000 are Jewish. According to a recent study of Austin by the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University, 44% of Jewish adults have lived in Greater Austin for less than one decade, while just 10% were raised locally.
The Ains are two of the 11,800 who have lived in the city for less than five years – part of a larger trend of people from the coasts coming to Austin to find something more laidback and affordable. With Moontower Minyan, they are trying to infuse that vibe into Judaism, along with a healthy dose of country tunes.
Think Purim pageants with country ballads about Esther, prayers sung to bluegrass melodies or a Honky Tonk Hanukkah with two-step lessons. Ain says Moontower Minyan is doing what Diaspora Jews have always done: blending local culture and their religion. And in a city once dubbed the “Live Music Capital of the World,” a minyan would not be authentically Austin without live music.
Though services often include traditional prayers, they also include bluegrass, jazz and other melodies. In addition, congregants take turns “making offerings,” which at Moontower means taking up a mic or an instrument and joining the band.
“If you go to a traditional synagogue, you’ll often hear melodies that are German,” Ain said. “If you go to a Reform synagogue, you might hear Debbie Friedman melodies, which are from the 1960s.”
“These are aesthetic choices, and the people that I’m meeting in Texas want to figure out ‘How do we create a Jewish community that looks and feels and sounds like us without it having to be reflected through how Eastern European Jewry looked and felt?’” he added.
David Rabinowicz, 32, moved from Boston five years ago with aspirations of gaining a foothold in the music scene. He quickly found his footing, but after Oct. 7, a lot of his industry friends turned their backs.
“I lost a pretty significant amount of my community,” he said. “A lot of the arts got dominated by anti-Jewish sentiments. It became very clear to me very quickly: I wished I had invested some time into building a Jewish community, in part as a safety net, and it became clear to me that was a very important thing to me missing from my life.”
Determined to do more “Jewish things,” he attended a Shabbat dinner where he met Ain and eventually became creative director of Moontower Minyan.
“It’s done a lot for me to get to take these ostensibly different sides of my life and not only have them coexist, but actively feed off of each other,” he said.
Jew Boom
Ain, now 50, hadn’t always planned to be a rabbi. He graduated law school, took the bar exam, and was about to begin practicing in Manhattan when 9/11 happened.
“I felt a calling to serve the Jewish people, in particular those who — like me — felt called back to their faith,” he said.
The following year, Ain enrolled in rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary, part of the Conservative movement. For two decades now, he has served Jews both through traditional congregations and independent minyanim, creating start-up projects with his wife, including a Brooklyn-based group called Because Jewish, which offered musical meditations.
Raised in Long Island, he never saw himself living in the Lone Star State.
Little did he know, for more than a century, Austin had been home to a small Jewish population until 1968, when the community began to grow. Since then it has grown 20-fold, one of the fastest growing Jewish communities in the U.S. University of Texas at Austin,
the flagship of the University of Texas system, has had much to do with that growth, bringing Jewish professors and students from all over the country.
As Austin became a center for high-tech industry, more Jewish adults moved there in the 1980s to work for companies like IBM, Texas Instruments and Motorola. But it was a single company, started by a Jewish UT Austin student, Michael Dell, that really made the city’s Jewish population explode: Dell Computers.
The company transformed Austin from a medium-sized college town to a booming tech-hub, drawing workers from across the country. In 2000, Michael Dell shaped the Jewish community in another way, creating the Dell Jewish Community Campus, which hosts the city’s JCC, federation, a day school and three synagogues.
Austin saw another boom during the COVID pandemic, when the Austin metro area’s population grew by 15 %. Moving to Austin in 2022 from San Francisco where Dan was a rabbi at a Conservative congregation, the Ains became part of this boom.
But the suburban-style Texas sprawl of Austin covers nearly 320 square miles, a footprint larger than New York City. Only 13% of Austin’s Jewish
families live in close proximity to the Dell campus in northwest Austin. For the Ains and many other Austin residents, getting there is practically a road trip. That might explain in part why the Brandeis study found that only
15% of Jewish households belong to a Jewish congregation either locally or elsewhere.
Light up the Texas night
Moontower Minyan fills a void in more ways than one.
Ellie Cohen, 23, is one of the few members of Moontown who was born and raised in Austin. She left for college at the University of California in Los Angeles, then came back, hoping to take advantage of the laid back vibe and musical culture. But she discovered her hometown, whose slogan famously used to be “Keep Austin Weird,” now wasn’t all that different from other American cities with high tech hubs and corporate headquarters.
As the city has become a destination, it’s also gotten more expensive. Artists have been priced out and homegrown live music venues have shuttered. For Cohen, worshiping with Moontown Minyan conjures what she missed.
“I didn’t think Jewish life could be cool in Austin, Texas,” Cohen said. “Judaism is such an intimate way to get to
know people. I love what Moontower is doing to awaken that in a lot of people.”
Moontower Minyan’s name is inspired by Austin’s history. More than a century ago Austin erected its first “moontowers,” 165-foot steel lighting structures to light up the darkness. The city still has 17 in use today, and they even got a shout out in the film “Dazed and Confused,” where the characters party under a moontower.
Dan Ain likes the imagery of a light in the darkness: “lighting up like a menorah, wanting to light up the Texas night, is a nice feeling for us.”
The minyan’s monthly Shabbats, held at the Something Cool Studios artist collective, draw around 60 people. High Holiday services were standing room only.
The Ains are even expanding the community into the area’s Hill Country, a rapidly-growing area right outside the city.
“When you leave a service that he does, you feel really good about yourself, and you feel really good about being Jewish,” said Sarah Kline, a mother of four who lives in the Hill Country town Dripping Springs. “That’s what I want my kids to feel.”
Phill Brush, a bluegrass bassist and singer who regularly performs at Moontower Minyan, had never thought to incorporate his Judaism into this bluegrass.
“Rabbi Dan is the first rabbi I hung out with since I graduated Hebrew school,” said Brush.
“His service style is not the typical sit down and say the prayers that we always say, and do that,” said Brush. “He is building and cultivating his own style and interpretation of spirituality, especially based around art and music, which resonates with me.”
Moontower Minyan even inspired Brush to start a new band, “Old Time Religion,” which sings bluegrass songs about stories from the Hebrew Bible and has become Moontower Minyan’s house band.
At a recent Shabbat dinner with Moontower’s leadership team, Alana Joblin Ain covered her eyes as she recited the blessings over the Shabbat flames. Dan Ain blessed the wine and challah, tore the bread and tossed chunks to guests across the table as he delivered a d’var Torah based on the parsha. He compared the Tower of Babel, built after the flood, to an ancient AI data center. Both illustrate humanity’s tendency toward self-preservation and conformity in the face of fear.
“God comes down and says this is not good,” he explained. “It’s not good if we lose the point of being human, which is to express our creativity and our individuality and our humanity the way God intended.”
“If you want to think about sort of after a tragedy when a lot of people wanted to get together and express their Jewish identity,” he said, referring to Oct. 7, “we’ve begun to create a space where people can do it in a way that feels authentic.”
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