Leading US Reform rabbi in Yom Kippur sermon: Unhinged, obsessive loathing of Israel is corrupting US values

NEW YORK — Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, a leading voice in the US Reform community, in his Yom Kippur sermon on Monday called on Jews to hedge their support for politicians, urged young Jews to take leadership roles amid rising hostility in the US, and warned that hatred of Israel was corrupting the US.

“My advice to the Jewish community is to support only politicians who support us and our liberal vision for America. Do not give to organizations that in the past may have allied with us, but so betrayed us after October 7,” he said.

Hirsch is a leader in the Reform movement in North America and the senior rabbi of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in Manhattan, one of the city’s most prominent Reform institutions.

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.

In his Yom Kippur speech, he drew a continuity between historical persecution of Jews and contemporary discrimination, saying, “To be a Jew is to be part of a nation that others seek to harm.”

“While pervasive anti-Jewish hostility is not new, it is new to us. We grew up in what has been described as the ‘Golden Age’ of American Jewry,” he said, according to a transcript shared with The Times of Israel before the speech. “It is this clear and obvious change that has so unnerved us.”

Jews are targeted in hate crimes far more than any other group in New York City, with at least 229 confirmed antisemitic hate crimes so far this year, according to NYPD data.

Hirsch warned that hatred of Israel and animosity toward Jews in politics, the intellectual sphere, and online were damaging US society. Other Jewish leaders, such as the historian Deborah Lipstadt, have repeatedly warned that antisemitism is a harbinger of societal deterioration.

“Jew-hatred is harming America. We are not only worried about ourselves. We are worried about the country we love,” Hirsch said. “Unhinged and obsessive loathing of Israel is corrupting American values. If allowed to spread, it is not only Jews who will pay the price. America will too.”

Hirsch called on Jews to “stay and fight” for the US, New York and the US Jewish community through protesting, advocacy, lobbying and political activity.

“Do not be enslaved to political tribes. The hatred exists on both the right and the left,” he said.

The speech came amid a fraught political season for centrist Jews. Most American Jews, and a large majority of Reform Jews, are Democrats. The party’s turn against Israel has put many Jewish Democrats in a bind as they navigate their allegiance to the party and the left with concerns about Jewish community welfare.

The Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, for example, has unnerved Jews with his harsh criticism of Israel, alliance with the extremist streamer Hasan Piker, and comments including the perceived justification of an attempted terror attack on a synagogue.

His candidacy, which could determine the Senate majority, has roiled Jews in the state. Some have called on the Democratic Party to agree to a list of “nonnegotiable” principles about Jewish safety, others have broken with their past allegiance to the party, and some have urged the community to vote for El-Sayed.

In New York, anti-Zionist politicians have won a series of elections for the House and local office. Darializa Avila Chevalier, who attended a celebratory rally on October 8, 2023, immediately after the devastating Hamas attack on Israel, won her House primary earlier this year for the district adjacent to the synagogue.

“We should continue to support causes that promote the general welfare of all Americans,” Hirsch said. “But before you donate your time or financial resources, inquire, research and ask these agencies what are their views of Jews, Israel and October 7.”

He called on younger Jews to assert themselves “on the field of ideas and values.”

Polls have found that younger American Jews are more critical of Israel, in a break from the older generations, while other young Jews have taken on leadership roles amid the turmoil in areas like the nearby Columbia University.

“You have the opportunity to be a great generation. Challenging times bring out strengths we never knew we had. Be heroic,” Hirsch said. “Join the struggle. Do not sit it out. That is as good a definition of a hero as anything — a person who, when needed, cannot sit it out.”

In an interview, Hirsch said he did not view his call to withhold political support as controversial.

“That’s what politics is about. You support people who have your values and want to further your values, and you oppose people who oppose your values,” he said.

He added that he was nonpartisan, was not “telling people how to vote,” acknowledged that voters are motivated by an array of issues, and viewed antisemitism as a problem on both the left and the right.

“It places on those members of the American Jewish community who are supportive of candidates an extra obligation to speak the truth to their own, to rebuke their own,” he said. “I don’t think it’s ever good politics for an electoral group to be taken for granted, and I don’t think that’s good politics for American Jews either.”

He described hatred of Israel as “unhinged and obsessive and reflexive,” and echoing antisemitic tropes by treating the Jewish state as “opposing everything that you think is good and noble.”

Such antisemitism, in every society where it has occurred, has damaged the society itself, he said.

Hirsch added that Israel, despite its “challenges,” is an American ally, part of the Western world and “confronting forces that seek to destroy the West.”

“Israel is fighting the civilizational struggle of those who seek to break down Western civilization,” he said. “Obsessive hatred and unhinged hatred — it’s opposed to reason and pluralism, which form the heart of Western civilization.”