Leading US Reform rabbi after midterms: The American Jewish ‘Golden Age’ has ended

NEW YORK — Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, a leading voice in the US Reform community, said in a Friday night Shabbat sermon that the American Jewish “Golden Age” has ended.

“We need to be honest with ourselves: We have entered a new era,” Hirsch said in a speech focused on the US midterm election results. “The Golden Age of American Jewry that defined the years when most older millennials, Gen X and Baby Boomers grew up and established careers and families is over.”

Hirsch is a leader in the Reform movement in North America, the president of the New York Board of Rabbis, and the senior rabbi of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in Manhattan, one of the city’s most prominent Reform congregations.

He has consistently pushed for continued attachment to Israel and opposed anti-Zionist activity in recent years, as the Reform community, the largest denomination in the US, has contended with discrimination, anti-Zionist activism and hostile politics.

Last week’s midterm elections saw the Democratic Party demolish Republicans across the US in congressional and state-level races.

The Democratic Party has become increasingly hostile to Israel in recent years, according to polling, and several candidates set to enter the US House of Representatives and Senate in January are openly anti-Zionist or members of the anti-Zionist Democratic Socialists of America.

Hirsch said the midterms were a “repudiation” of US President Donald Trump, driven by economic factors influenced by the Iran war, corruption, tariffs, immigration enforcement, and Trump himself.

He added that antisemitism has always existed in the US, but had previously “receded from public life and social institutions.”

“Jews were respected, embraced and overrepresented in many fields of human endeavor prized by society. Israel had broad bipartisan support. Those heady days seem over. We are reverting to the historical norm,” he said. “While the erosion of the Golden Age was brewing for many years, October 7, 2023, was its symbolic end.”

Since the October 2023 Hamas invasion of southern Israel, hostility to Israel has “triggered a surge in anti-Jewish hostility” in the US, and “anti-Jewish sentiments” have been normalized on the political right and left, Hirsch said.

He cited statements from commentator Hasan Piker, who has said that he would vote for Hamas over Israel and that a liberal Zionist is akin to a liberal Nazi, singling out a political advertisement that blamed Israel for food prices in the US.

US House Representative-elect Darializa Avila Chevalier, from the district adjacent to the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, for example, attended a celebratory rally the day after the October 7 attack, refused to condemn Hamas or its invasion during the campaign, and has posted online that “Israel doesn’t exist.”

The most “telling moment” was Michigan Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed stating that “hurt people hurt people,” after an attempted terror attack against a Michigan synagogue and preschool, Hirsch said, adding that “those who know better” have refrained from condemning the anti-Zionist rhetoric.

Hirsch defended criticism of Israel, but said some of the incoming Congress members “are not only critical of Israel, they are viscerally, obsessively and ideologically opposed to the very idea of Israel,” viewing the Jewish state as “the epitome of evil.”

“Anti-Zionism is a hateful ideology of destruction — as illiberal and immoral as anything in modern public life,” he said.

Hirsch said that anti-Zionist leftists like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and El-Sayed voice support for Jewish safety and condemn “swastikas on Jewish buildings,” but “refuse to acknowledge the clear-cut evidence that their obsession with Israel’s destruction supercharges antisemitism.”

“Whatever happens, we will still be living here with growing anti-Zionism, which — in turn — generates intensifying antisemitism. We are in for years of turbulence,” he said.

Anti-Zionists say their ideology is anti-Israel and political, not anti-Jewish. Societies that have embraced anti-Zionism have crushed Jewish life, such as the Soviet Union and Iran.

Surveys have repeatedly found increased antisemitism in the US and other Western countries in recent years. The 20 Diaspora Jews killed in political violence last year represented the highest toll in decades.

Hirsch called for coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians and said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “right-wing messianism and West Bank lawlessness” were contributing factors in anti-Israel hostility, but did not account for anti-Zionism’s rejection of Israel’s existence.

Hirsch called for US Jewish communal leaders to do a “searing reassessment.”

“We will need to relearn how to work much smarter, seeking coalitions and partnerships wherever we can. We need to be more realistic and humble about our true influence in years to come,” he  said.

“These will be fateful and momentous years for our community,” he said. “May it not be said that we were weighed in the balance and found wanting.”

Hirsch had warned last year that the “Golden Age” of American Jewry “appears to be ending.” Friday’s sermon was the first time he declared that the era had passed.

He had also warned in a Yom Kippur sermon in September that hatred of Israel was corrupting the US, called on Jews to hedge their support for politicians and urged young Jews to take on leadership roles in the community.