Good Friday morning!
Ed. note: In observance of Yom Kippur, the next Your Daily Phil will arrive on Wednesday, Sept. 27. Shabbat shalom and gmar hatima tova!
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we travel with an Israeli nonprofit bringing wheelchair users to the Western Wall before Yom Kippur and look at how 12-step recovery programs overlap with the Ten Days of Repentance. We also feature opinion pieces from Amy Rosenblatt Lui, Tamar Kosky Lazarus and Erica Brown. We’ll start with a preview of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting with American Jewish leaders in New York later today after his address to the United Nations General Assembly.
For less-distracted reading over the weekend, browse this week’s edition of The Weekly Print, a curated print-friendly PDF featuring a selection of recent Jewish Insider, eJewishPhilanthropy and The Circuit stories, including: Erdogan meets with Jewish leaders, amid warming relations with Israel; Biden, Netanyahu play nice in New York, ‘even with our differences’; UPenn president declines to intervene in antisemitic conference on campus. Print the latest edition here.
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, fresh off his address to the U.N. General Assembly, meets with American Jewish leaders this afternoon in New York, he will face a group sharply divided over his government’s efforts to weaken Israel’s judiciary. That divide was on vivid display on the streets of Manhattan yesterday, where dueling rallies over Israel’s judicial overhaul measures — a larger one protesting it and a smaller one supporting it — took place outside Netanyahu’s hotel last night, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Haley Cohen. (There was also a far, far smaller demonstration by anti-Zionist Neturei Karta members nearby.)
Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, who participated in the “Protest for Israel’s Democracy” outside Netanyahu’s hotel, told eJP that he will attend the meeting with the Israeli premier. In February, Jacobs was also the first Diaspora leader to speak at a protest against the government’s judicial overhaul in Tel Aviv. (Two months later, Sheila Katz, CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women, was the first Diaspora leader to address an anti-overhaul protest in English. She too will attend today’s meeting with Netanyahu.)
Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, also confirmed to eJP he will be in attendance at today’s meeting. Klein and ZOA participated in the rally across the street in support of Netanyahu, dubbed “We Stand with Israel and its Democratically Elected Government.”
In addition to URJ, NCJW and ZOA, eJP confirmed that representatives from Jewish Federations of North America, American Jewish Committee, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Anti-Defamation League, Orthodox Union, United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, Jewish National Fund, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, World Jewish Congress, Jewish Agency for Israel, Young Israel, Hadassah and Agudath Israel would be in attendance. Leaders from the local Persian, Syrian and Bukharian communities were also invited and confirmed attendance. At least one representative from UJA-Federation of New York was also expected.
It is not yet clear whether the meeting will be more of a conversation or an address by Netanyahu to the leaders. Israeli officials described it as a “briefing for Jewish organizations,” though in the past such events have included more open discussions.
The CEO of the USCJ, Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal, told eJP that he hoped to encourage the Israeli premier to put on hold his government’s plans to further reshape the country’s balances of power and start a process of finding compromise. He also said he would stress U.S. Jews’ commitment to Israel even if they “may oppose or protest some of his policies” and that they “do so out of love and support for the State of Israel.” At the same time, Blumenthal said he planned to discuss his concerns “about Israel’s character as a strong and democratic state that is committed to individual rights and religious pluralism.”
In addition, Blumenthal said he took issue with Netanyahu’s handling of his meeting with Elon Musk. “The prime minister’s remarks in his meeting with Elon Musk did not go far enough in condemning the ways antisemitism is permitted and boosted by Twitter/X. Moreover, he needed to condemn specifically Musk’s ‘blame the victim’ strategy in threatening to sue the ADL,” he said.
Klein, on the other hand, said he planned to encourage Netanyahu to stay the course on his government’s plans to weaken the judiciary and to continue building settlements in the West Bank, which he referred to by its biblical name. “I’m urging him to stay strong and not stop building on Judea and Samaria, Jews have every right to live there, [and] to stay strong on judicial reform,” Klein told eJP.
Follow our sister publication Jewish Insider for coverage on Netanyahu’s speech at the General Assembly, which is scheduled for 9:15 a.m. ET.
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