President-elect Donald Trump promised “all hell to pay in the Middle East” if the Israeli hostages Hamas still holds are not released by Jan. 20, when he is inaugurated.

Trump made the threat, which he did not elaborate upon, on social media on Monday, hours after Israel announced that an American-Israeli held hostage in Gaza had in fact been killed on Oct. 7, 2023.

“Everybody is talking about the hostages who are being held so violently, inhumanely, and against the will of the entire World, in the Middle East – But it’s all talk, and no action!” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.

“Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that if the hostages are not released prior to January 20, 2025, the date that I proudly assume Office as President of the United States, there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against Humanity,” he said. “Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!”

It was not clear whether Trump was threatening to use U.S. military might in the war in Gaza, which would represent a stark departure from U.S. policy in the region and beyond. The statement did not mention Israel, Hamas or Gaza specifically.

Israel has been fighting Hamas on the ground in Gaza since shortly after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, when it took more than 250 hostages. The Biden administration has for almost a year sought a temporary ceasefire to bring out the remaining hostages, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly said it is his mission to free the hostages, including through military means.

Whom Trump would pressure is also not clear; Hamas is rudderless since Israel killed much of its top leadership, and Qatar, until recently the country closest to the terrorist group, reportedly has recently acceded to a U.S. demand that it expel Hamas officials based there.

There are believed to be some 101 hostages, living and dead, held by Hamas, including seven who are American citizens. Omer Neutra’s parents spoke on behalf of the families at the Republican National Convention in August, where father Ronen revealed that Trump had called the couple shortly after Oct. 7.

At the convention, Trump previously warned that Hamas would pay “a very big price” if it did not release the hostages by Jan. 20.

Trump has said he believes most of the remaining hostages are dead. Hamas over the weekend released video of a living American-Israeli hostage, Edan Alexander, who in his scripted comments exhorted Trump to use the “influence and the full power of the United States to negotiate for our freedom.” Two other American-Israeli hostages are thought to be alive.

Some Israelis welcomed Trump’s pledge. President Isaac Herzog said, “Thank you and bless you Mr. President-elect.”

“Thank you, President Trump,” former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in a tweet. “RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!”

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Monday that flags on state buildings will be flown at half-staff in memory of Omer Neutra.

The announcement came hours after the Israeli military disclosed that Neutra, an American-Israeli held hostage in Gaza, was killed by Hamas in its Oct. 7, 2023, attack.

Neutra was born in New York City and raised in Plainview, Long Island. Growing up, he attended the Schechter School of Long Island and Camp Young Judaea Sprout Lake, in Dutchess County.

He moved to Israel after high school and served in the Israel Defense Forces as a tank commander. Hamas fighters attacked his tank in the Oct. 7 invasion, killing him along with other soldiers.

“For months we’ve prayed for the safe return of Omer Neutra and all those kidnapped by Hamas on October 7th. This horrific news shakes all New Yorkers to our core,” Hochul said in a statement. “I’ve met with Omer’s brave family and learned so much about this incredible young man. As we mourn this tragedy, let us continue to pray for the safe return of the remaining hostages, an end to the war without Hamas in power, and a lasting peace.”

New York State buildings will lower their flags to half-staff on Tuesday, when a memorial service for Neutra will take place at Midway Jewish Center in Syosset, Long Island at 10:30 a.m. (The service will be livestreamed here.)

Since his abduction, Neutra’s parents Orna and Ronen have been among the most visible advocates for the hostages’ release, including by calling for a deal that would free the captives. They appeared at the Republican National Convention and spoke directly with both President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump.

In late August, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, another American-Israeli hostage who had become the face of the hostages’ plight in the United States, was executed by Hamas along with five other hostages shortly before the Israeli military discovered their bodies in Gaza.

Hamas is still believed to be holding Neutra’s body in Gaza, along with six other Americans. Three of them are thought to still be alive: Edan Alexander, Keith Siegel and Sagui Dekel-Chen. Hamas recently released a video showing Alexander alive.

It is, perhaps, no great surprise that the son of a talented cantor would grow up chanting prayers during Shabbat and holiday services. Or that Yair Keydar, 11, might perform Hebrew and Yiddish songs during concerts at various Jewish venues.

What could not have been anticipated, however, is that Keydar — known for his stirring renditions of “Oseh Shalom” and “Hashkiveinu” during services — would make his New York stage debut in an off-Broadway show called “Drag: The Musical.” The loud, fun, flashy production is about two rival drag queens who open competing clubs across the street from each other; the show opens and closes with voiceover messages from one of its producers, Liza Minnelli.

“It’s definitely super-different,” Keydar said, describing what it’s like to perform in what some might consider a risqué off-Broadway play after a lifetime in synagogues. “I mean, I’m dancing in a tutu in this show!”

Keydar’s somewhat unlikely journey into the world of musical theater began on the bimah. His Israeli-born parents met in the U.S., and a decade ago, his mother, Magda Fishman, became the cantor at Temple Beth El in Stamford, Connecticut. (His father, Zarin Keydar, is a global technical solution manager.) As soon as their young son could walk, he would run up to his mother during services and try to grab the microphone — a not-so-subtle foreshadowing of what was to come.

“The first time I remember singing in public, my mom did an interfaith event at a church, and wanted me to do a duet with her in front of about 500 people,” Keydar said in a recent interview.

Just how old was he at the time? “Three and a half,” he said.

In 2019, Fishman was hired by Rabbi David Steinhardt of the B’nai Torah Congregation in Boca Raton, the largest Conservative synagogue in South Florida. Steinhardt and I have been close friends since our Camp Ramah days in Palmer, Massachusetts in the 1960s. As a New Yorker who winters in Florida and often attends B’nai Torah, I was captivated by the cantor’s soaring vocals and vast, diverse repertoire of music.

At the same time, I began paying attention to the budding talent of her towheaded son. When the COVID-19 pandemic forced the suspension of in-person Shabbat services, I would watch Fishman and Keydar from their home on Zoom, singing their hearts out as if they were at Carnegie Hall.

It was clear something special going on with this prodigy, who was then just 7 years old.“In addition to his beautiful voice and sweetness, Yair has always been authentic, respectful, and kind,” Steinhardt said. “And he’s an extraordinary performer.”

After years of attending the Donna Klein Jewish Academy in Boca, Keydar added voice, acting and dance classes at the after-school Broadway Bound Academy. While originally focused on singing, “I started acting, and it just kept on going, and that’s when I realized I love it,” Keydar said.

In 2023, Fishman and Keydar came to Manhattan to perform in the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene’s “New York Sings Yiddish!,” a massive singalong in Central Park. The duo wowed the 4,000 in attendance that evening with what was possibly the most joyous version of “Chiribim, Chiribom” since it was first recorded by the legendary Cantor Moishe Oysher in 1931.

In May of this year, Keydar received rave reviews for his portrayal of Professor Harold Hill at the Broadway Bound Academy’s production of “The Music Man.” Having acquired a manager and agent in recent years, a life-changing phone call came in an unexpected location. “I was shopping with my dad at Walmart, and both my manager and agent wanted to talk with us,” Keydar said. “We went to the back of the store where they were restocking things, and they told me I had booked the role of Brendan in ‘Drag: The Musical.’ I wanted to scream it to everybody! It was such a surreal moment.”

It was also a vindication of Keydar’s commitment to performing. For years, he said, many of his schoolmates “didn’t get it.”

“Especially me as a boy doing dance in school instead of P.E., I’m not going to say I was bullied, but I got teased for it,” he said. “And I just feel like, I don’t bully people for playing football and soccer; you have your thing, and I like singing, dancing and acting. But my close friends, they get it.”

After several weeks of previews, “Drag” opened in October. Keydar alternates in the role of Brendan — a 10-year-old who finds himself drawn to the sparkly sunglasses and glittery outfits of the drag queens — with another young Jewish actor, Remi Tuckman.

In addition to fulfilling his theater dreams, Keydar is also excited about living, with his father, in Manhattan. “I love New York,” the newly minted Hell’s Kitchen resident, who is continuing his studies at a Florida virtual school, said. “It’s so much fun. It’s my first experience with city life.”

Keydar said that his “Drag” character resonates deeply with him. “It’s a powerful character, and it relates to me in many ways,” he said. “I think it encourages other kids to be who they are.”

Audiences and reviewers are loving the campy show, and Keydar has received extravagant praise. “Keydar sings like an angel,” Chip Deffaa of TheaterScene.net wrote. “He has only two numbers. But no one in the show earned greater applause than this young boy, now making his New York stage debut. Just a beautiful, unspoiled — and sweetly tender — performance. No attitude. No guile. Just singing from the heart.”

Rave reviews are wonderful — but what matters more to Keydar is the feedback from the well-known actors who are his co-stars. Brendan’s conservative, uptight dad is portrayed by Joey McIntyre, the actor/singer/songwriter who gained instant fame at age 12 when he joined the late-1980s boy band New Kids on the Block. “He’s lovely,” McIntyre, the father of three teenagers, told me about Keydar. “And I’m not just saying that. He’s incredibly talented and really funny. I admire his work ethic, and his joy for what he does. I’m very happy for him.”

Actor/singer/dancer Nick Adams, a Broadway mainstay since 2007, dazzles in the role of drag queen Alexis Gillmore, who is also Brendan’s uncle. “I see a lot of myself in him, especially in this role,” Adams said of Keydar. “Just wanting to perform at that age, and to explore theater. I’m very surprised at his presence on stage; he’s really in the moment with me. It’s a gift to work with him, I’m very thankful we have him, and I don’t want him to get too old!”  

Acclaim is coming from all corners. In honor of the hit movie “Wicked,” Keydar recorded a cover of a song from the musical, “The Wizard and I,” written by composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz (who also wrote the music for “Godspell,” “Pippin,” “Prince of Egypt” among others).

I thought that Schwartz might enjoy seeing how Keydar performed the song, so I sent him the YouTube link. The multiple Grammy, Oscar and Golden Globe winner loved the boy’s rendition, writing: “Yair is an extraordinary young talent with a beautiful voice, and a remarkably mature knowledge of how to use it.”

Back in Boca — where Keydar’s mom continues to work as a cantor — Steinhardt said that most B’nai Torah members are ecstatic over Keydar’s success, and at least two dozen have come to New York to see the show and kvell. “Our congregation is very proud of him,” he said. “His endearing personality has made him feel like the young son of so many people in our community.”

As for Keydar, he’s clear about his future. “This is my dream,” he said. “This is what I’ve been working towards. I can’t wait to continue and do more and see what’s next.”

“Drag: The Musical” has an open-ended run at Manhattan’s New World Stages (340 West 50th St.). Yair Keydar is currently scheduled to perform in the show until the end of March.

PORAT, Israel — Eyal Golan sat at a table flanked by two citrus trees in his parents’ garden in the pastoral community of Porat – a makeshift office that has become, reluctantly, his command center. Here, he has conducted dozens of media interviews about his sister Shirel, who died by suicide at the family home on her 22nd birthday.

Shirel and her boyfriend Adi Gilad were among the thousands of festival goers who fled the Nova music festival as Hamas terrorists began massacring revelers on Oct. 7, 2023. Of around 4,000 attendees, 364 were killed and several dozen taken hostage to Gaza. Those who survived witnessed extreme violence, including rape and mutilation, and experienced intense trauma after waiting hours, in many cases, for rescue. The Golan family blames the government for not doing enough to prevent his sister’s death, which came after a battle with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Initially, Golan wrestled with keeping up the media blitz during shiva, the traditional Jewish mourning period, but his psychologist reassured him that by speaking out, he was channeling his grief into purpose.

“I will do everything to be her voice and the voice of her friends who are still living,” he said.

Those friends, by all accounts, are still struggling more than a year after Israel’s deadliest day. While viral reports of dozens of suicides among Nova survivors are unsubstantiated, survivors, their families and mental health advocates all say that Israel is facing a crisis when it comes to the mental health of those who made it out of Nova’s killing fields.

A Nova survivor who asked to be referred only by his initials G.N. said he was aware of “at least another three who are very likely going to commit suicide soon.”

“There are so many who are technically still alive but who basically died on Oct 7,” he said.

The government initially offered 12 therapy sessions for Nova survivors, later increasing it to 48 after SafeHeart — a group formed by volunteer therapists after the Oct. 7 attack that has treated more than 3,000 survivors — lobbied, and said that even 48 sessions “falls short of what is truly needed.”

In a statement issued after Shirel Golan’s death, SafeHeart called for Israeli authorities to do more. “Shirel’s family is right — the government must step up and do more,” it said.

Shirel Golan was hospitalized twice because of her PTSD symptoms. But two months before her death, she stopped leaving the house, refused to seek treatment and, in the days before, “clammed up completely,” her brother said.

Golan warned that without additional and timely mental health support, those affected by the Oct. 7 attack risk becoming another “lost generation” — a generation scarred by war and plagued by widespread disillusionment and a sense of existential loss.

“We saw what happened because of Germany’s lost generation after World War I. It resulted in the worst calamity to befall the Jewish people,” he said.

Golan said many family members of Nova survivors have expressed a fear of leaving their children unattended, worried they may attempt suicide. “I have heard countless parents tell me that they can’t leave their child alone for one second, because the treatment they’re getting is just not enough.”

Golan claimed that there had been several suicides among the Nova community, citing one estimate that his sister’s had been the 53rd. In Knesset hearing in April, Nova survivor Guy Ben Shimon made similar allegations, saying that as of February, there were “almost 50 suicides among the Nova survivors” and adding that the number had likely since increased.

But the number was fiercely contested by health ministry officials at the same hearing, with Gilad Bodenheimer, director of the ministry’s mental health division, saying they knew of “only a few cases of suicide.” The ministry also told the Haaretz newspaper that based on its records, Shirel’s death is the only confirmed case of suicide among Nova survivors to date.

Neither Bodenheimer nor the health ministry responded to requests for comment on the discrepancies between Bodenheimer’s estimate of several suicides, the health ministry’s claim of only one, and the second-hand accounts from some members of the Nova community.

“It’s in the government’s interest to keep the number of suicides quiet, they don’t want it to spread,” said Daniel Sharabi, a Nova survivor who saved dozens of lives at the rave by administering first aid and firing at terrorists from an abandoned tank and since has launched a nonprofit to support his fellow survivors. Sharabi said a member of a parents’ group for Nova survivors had told him there had been “tens of cases” of suicide but said he was not personally aware of any.

Efrat Atun, CEO of SafeHeart, said she did not know of more suicides apart from Shirel’s. At a hearing at the Knesset earlier this month, she censured one lawmaker for saying that there were more than 10 suicides in the Nova community, calling it “irresponsible.”

At the same hearing, the health ministry and the social welfare ministry warned that there were at least 30 Nova survivors deemed as very high risk for suicide. More than a hundred were currently hospitalized in mental health institutions, the ministries said, but Atun said the number was closer to 150.

Mark Weiser, director of the psychiatric division at Sheba Medical Center, who has researched Nova survivors, cautions against oversimplifying suicide — which he describes as “rare and multifactorial” — by attributing it to a single traumatic event.

He explained that with around 4,000 people who attended the Nova party, it’s reasonable to expect that several hundred will be significantly affected by trauma. Of those, about 5% — or roughly 200 individuals — may struggle the most, a figure that aligns with what is typically seen in trauma survivors.

“If several of that 5% are suicidal and are doing too much alochol and drugs because they’re having difficulty dealing with these issues, those are numbers that make sense,” he said.

Defining PTSD numbers in the general population is challenging, with findings varying widely. One study estimated that over half a million Israelis are at risk of developing PTSD, while another put the number at 30,000. Data from the immediate aftermath of traumatic events offer insights about what can be expected over time. For example, following 9/11, high percentages of New Yorkers exhibited post-traumatic symptoms. Similarly, a study published in The Lancet’s EClinicalMedicine found that the prevalence of PTSD and depression among all Israelis in the weeks following Oct. 7 nearly doubled compared to figures recorded two months before the attack.

According to Weiser, psychiatry allows for different interpretations of trauma: for instance, while one perspective can hold that while a single traumatic event is harmful, repeated exposure may lead to desensitization, another may argue that repeated stress is actually more damaging than a single traumatic experience.

“I can interpret everything one way and then flip it the exact other way. But if you’re asking my opinion, the first is true,” he said. “The first time there was an air raid siren, it was really quite frightening. But after the 12th time, you move on.”

While he did not downplay the tremendous strain on the healthcare system, citing soaring numbers of Israelis seeking psychological treatment and prescriptions for anti-anxiety medications, Weiser stressed that most Israelis, including survivors themselves, overcome the trauma.

“The majority of people who experience severe stressors adapt. We’re hardwired to,” he said.

Atun rejected comparisons to 9/11, because the events in Israel were ongoing. “This isn’t an event that happened and ended, it’s not like a terror attack where a bus explodes and then it’s over,” she said. “It’s very difficult to measure how many are traumatized, because people are still in Oct. 7. There are still hostages, there are missiles, there is war.”

But she said she disagreed with the idea that PTSD was decreasing over time, noting that in recent months, SafeHeart had experienced a “huge surge” in referrals, starting with the execution of six hostages — five of whom were Nova survivors — and continuing through a two-month period of Oct. 7-related anniversaries, yahrzeits, and memorial days.

“The cases are getting increasingly worse,” Atun said.

A video of Shirel’s friend, Yael Tobol, went viral on social media after she claimed that she “might be the next case” of suicide. Tobol told the Kan public broadcaster that she had tried to be hospitalized but was rejected.

G.N., meanwhile, has been volunteering with the group founded by Daniel Sharabi and his brother Neria, also a Nova survivor.

Sharabi, whose best friend Yosef Haim Ohana was kidnapped at the festival and is still a hostage in Gaza, said he was inspired to set up the nonprofit, called A Future for the Survivors and the Wounded, after another close friend attempted suicide.

The nonprofit, which is staffed by 70 volunteers, has supported the mental recovery of more than 700 Nova survivors with a range of mental health, economic, and social services, including trauma counseling, financial aid, community-building activities and aiding reentry into the workforce.

Sharabi described how many survivors’ lives had unraveled, leaving them without structure, hope, or the ability to cope with constant triggers and uncertainty about the future — a struggle which in many cases is compounded by drug use, intensifying the feelings of dissociation and despair. “Drugs — especially psychedelics — can create a huge mess in the recovery process,” he said. “You need to be a stable and healthy person to do them. Healing like this should be done while clean of drugs, because they just amplify everything.”

The exception, Sharabi noted, is in a controlled clinical setting, where psychedelics have been shown to have a potentially palliative effect on trauma. Sharabi hopes to partner with trauma specialists to offer ketamine-assisted therapy to add to the other trauma therapies — including EMDR — his group already offers.

Hundreds of survivors of the Oct. 7 attacks, including Nova survivors, are also slated to participate in a clinical trial using MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in Weiser’s division at Sheba Medical Center.

Sharabi said he and his brother had “found our life’s mission” with the nonprofit. But while he left his job at Israel’s defense ministry to dedicate himself to it full-time, he recently made the decision to begin his undergraduate studies at an Israeli university.

“I felt I needed something else, to break away from the constant focus on trauma. Because if you get too wrapped up in it, you risk losing yourself entirely,” he said.

The Tribe of Nova Foundation, founded by organizers of the Nova festival, likewise supports survivors and their families, offering mental health services, therapeutic workshops and other weekly community events that provide a space for healing through shared experiences.

Co-founder Raz Malka explained that the nonprofit arose from two core realizations: that only survivors could fully understand one another’s trauma, and that the authorities were simply unprepared for the scale of new victims needing care.

“I don’t blame the state. There are just too many people who need help, and even if there was no lack of budget, there just aren’t enough professionals,” he said. “We’re working around the clock and it’s still not enough. You help one person and another three appear.”

Malka said he did not personally know of anyone who had committed suicide.

Some survivors have chosen to shun conventional psychological treatments. Tribe of Nova, for example, has a dedicated sports department offering everything from horseback riding to basketball and ping pong.

“Before we started the sports department, there were survivors who hadn’t left their homes for months,” Malka said. “With such a large and diverse group, we need as many solutions as possible.”

Earlier this month, the foundation’s soccer team competed in a tournament against teams from other struggling groups, including the devastated kibbutzim, wounded soldiers, and displaced northerners.

Others prefer to seek support and grounding through spiritual avenues. At a recent retreat organized by the haredi Orthodox outreach group Kesher Yehudi, held over Simchat Torah — the date also marking the one-year Hebrew anniversary of Oct. 7 — Osher Daniel said she gathered the most strength from her connection to God.

“More than faith in God, it’s having the faith that he exists in each of us and acting on that,” she said.

Kesher Yehudi’s founder and CEO, Tzili Schneider, emphasizes, however, that the group’s mission is not therapeutic. “We are not therapists or social workers, and we don’t profess to have expertise in PTSD or to treat it.” she said. “We empathize — the whole country is traumatized on some level — we offer compassion, love and togetherness. The Nova survivors tell us often that this helps them, that it helps with their healing process, which is wonderful.”

Osher Daniel, too, has started her own project pairing Nova survivors with one another to commit to weekly phone calls for mutual support. “Who knows if just by simply checking in, we might prevent someone from, God forbid, taking their own life?”

Her mission echoes that of Eyal Golan, who, from his garden office, pledged to honor his sister’s memory by raising awareness to prevent more loss among the Nova community. “If I manage to save just one of them, I’ve done enough,” he said.

President-elect Donald Trump says he is nominating Charles Kushner, his son-in-law’s father, to be ambassador to France, marking a reversal of Kushner’s public standing after he served time in prison nearly two decades ago.

Kushner, whose son Jared is married to Ivanka Trump, went to jail in 2005 for fraud, tax evasion and witness tampering. His crime generated national headlines long before his Trump connection because it included paying a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law. It also induced distress in his New Jersey Orthodox Jewish community, where he was a generous donor.

Trump pardoned Kushner four years ago, citing his record of service since his time in prison. Now, Trump has chosen him to represent the United States in one of the United States’ most prominent allies.

“I am pleased to nominate Charles Kushner, of New Jersey, to serve as the U.S. Ambassador to France,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, his social network, on Saturday. “He is a tremendous business leader, philanthropist, & dealmaker, who will be a strong advocate representing our Country & its interests.”

Trump has chosen another of his children’s fathers-in-law (known as “machatunim” in Jewish parlance) for a different post. Massad Boulos, the Lebanese-American businessman who is the father of Tiffany Trump’s husband, will be Trump’s senior adviser for Arab and Middle Eastern affairs. Boulos is seen as having played a major role in strengthening Trump’s support among Arab Americans in November’s elections and will hold a portfolio pivotal to Trump’s promise to expand the Abraham Accords between Israel and Arab nations. He will serve alongside Trump’s friend and fellow real estate mogul Steve Witkoff, who is Jewish, and who the president-elect also tapped to be a Middle East envoy.

Omer Neutra, an American-Israeli held hostage in Gaza, was killed by Hamas during its attack on Oct. 7, 2023, the Israeli military announced Monday.

The announcement of Neutra’s death means that of the seven Americans thought to be held by Hamas, at least four are presumed dead. It comes shortly after Hamas released a proof-of-life video of Edan Alexander, another of the American hostages it is holding captive.

Neutra, who was 21 on Oct. 7, is the son of Israeli parents who grew up on Long Island, where he attended Jewish day school and camp. Following graduation, he moved to Israel and enlisted in the military. He was serving as a tank commander when he was killed.

In the more than a year since his abduction, his parents Orna and Ronen became prominent faces of the movement to free the hostages. They spoke at the Republican National Convention this past summer as well as at a gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition and numerous other forums. They have also spoken directly with President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump in an effort to free their son and the other hostages, and over the summer at Ramah Day Camp in Nyack, where Omer worked as a swim instructor.

“We just learned that this prayer couldn’t be answered for the family of Omer Neutra,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a statement. “Omer was barbarically murdered by Hamas in the October 7 attacks. We pray that his body can be returned to his family, who have been speaking out for him & all hostages since that horrific day.”

Neutra’s parents had repeatedly pushed for a deal to free the captives, but said they felt political will was lacking. “It seems like it’s only urgent for the hostage families and of course all of the Israeli families and the Jewish world. Not for the politicians,” Ronen Neutra said in a September interview days after the body of another high-profile American hostage, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, was discovered along with five others in Gaza.

Now, the Israel Defense Forces announced based on intelligence that Neutra was killed on Oct. 7 with two other soldiers serving in the tank he commanded. His body is still being held by Hamas, along with dozens of others presumed to be dead. Hamas is holding approximately 100 hostages in total.

“Our hearts are with the Neutra family this morning, who, after more than a year of a determined, traumatic, and worldwide struggle, received the devastating news confirming the death of their beloved son,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog said in a statement. “Omer was born and raised in the United States and chose to make Aliyah to Israel, and enlist in the IDF to stand in the defense of our people.”

The news of Neutra’s death came days after Hamas released a video of Alexander, in which he asks Trump to reach a deal to free the hostages. For more than a year, Biden’s administration has worked to reach such an agreement without success, though the recent ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah has resurfaced prospects for a deal in Gaza.

The other two American hostages thought to still be alive are Keith Siegel and Sagui Dekel-Chen.

In the 1970s, my parents and all the Jewish parents I knew had what I came to call the Jewish Bookshelf. On it sat “The Source” by James Michener, “Exodus” by Leon Uris, “The Chosen” by Chaim Potok, “Portnoy’s Complaint” by Philip Roth, “This Is My God” by Herman Wouk and “World of Our Fathers” by Irving Howe.

The first four were novels, shelved here in ascending order from lowbrow to highbrow. Wouk’s book is nonfiction, part memoir and part how-to about living an observant Jewish life. Howe’s is a classic history of Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe.

Whenever I share this list with boomer friends, they nod in recognition, and a certain nostalgia for a time when Jews — or certainly suburban American Jews of the post-war era ± were literally on the same page. The era that also gave us a synagogue building boom, the ever-more-lavish bar and bat mitzvah and the rise and fall of the Jewish Catskills was a middle-class, Ashkenazi monoculture. Our parents shared reading tastes in ways that seem to be unthinkable today, when media culture, like Jewish culture, has splintered. I’d be hard-pressed to pick five Jewish books from the last decade or two that I am confident could be found on the shelves of a present-day cohort of middle-aged Jews. 

How that Jewish literary monoculture came to be and how it crumbled has become the subject of academic study, and of at least three books in the past year alone. The one that most directly focuses on the middle-class tastes of Jews like my parents is “Postwar Stories: How Books Made Judaism American,” by Rachel Gordan. An assistant professor of religion and Jewish studies at the University of Florida, Gordan examines what Jews were reading and writing in the period immediately following World War II. She’s less interested in the literary heavy hitters of the time — Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud and Roth, say — than in two very specific genres of middlebrow books.

The first she calls “Introduction to Judaism literature.” It includes Wouk’s “This Is My God,” “Basic Judaism” by Conservative rabbi Milton Steinberg and “What the Jews Believe,” by Steinberg’s cousin, Rabbi Philip Bernstein. 

Many of these books — Gordan counts over 40 written between 1945 and 1960 — were marketed to the general public. Such books addressed non-Jew’s ignorance of Judaism at a time “when Cold War American citizenship seemed to require denominational affiliation.” (America, remember, was facing down the godless communists.) The authors of such Intro to Judaism books were also motivated by the suspicion that “American Jews themselves, not just non-Jews, were often ignorant about Judaism.” These children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren of immigrants “stood at a remove from the religion of their ancestors.” 

Gordan’s second genre is “anti-antisemitism literature,” epitomized by “Gentleman’s Agreement,” Laura Z. Hobson’s 1947 novel about a journalist who goes undercover as a Jew to experience antisemitism for himself (the film adaptation, starring Gregory Peck, won that year’s Oscar for best picture). Such works asserted that eschewing antisemitism and accepting Jews as part of the (white) American religious mainstream were essential parts of a “pro-democracy and anti-fascist worldview.” 

Gordan argues that both genres helped transform American Jews and Judaism, turning them into “subjects that Americans could understand and accept.” Jews themselves, meanwhile, learned that their Jewishness did not have to be experienced as a liability. This led, by the 1970s, in two paradoxical directions: Jews embraced their ethnic identity in private and popular culture, but also assimilated into the mainstream and lost their Jewish distinctiveness.

It should be obvious by now that, except for Hobson, the writers I’ve mentioned so far are men. All of the recent scholarly works about this period are by women, and each addresses the gender gap. In the delightfully titled “Carrying a Big Schtick: Jewish Acculturation and Masculinity in the Twentieth Century,” Miriam Eve Mora writes how many of the male novelists, stung by antisemitic accusations that Jewish men were “feminized,” set out to “demonstrate the Jewish ability to perform masculinity on par with their national brethren.” She quotes historian Paul Breines, who describes the macho works of Uris, Roth, Mailer and Bellow as the “Rambowitz novels.”

Mora, the director of academic programs at the Center for Jewish History in New York City, analyses this attitude with some sympathy. The “view of Jewish men as weak or effeminate,” she writes, “has been a constant strain among popular sentiments about Jewish manhood in America, and there has always been a corresponding strain of Jewish men attempting to remedy this sentiment through proving or improving their manhood.” 

Somewhat less sympathetic is Ronnie Grinberg, a historian at the University of Oklahoma. Her book, “Write Like a Man: Jewish Masculinity and the New York Intellectuals,” studies the aggro posturing at “little” magazines like Commentary and Partisan Review and among their male contributors, including Norman Mailer, Lionel Trilling, Nathan Glazer, Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz. Besides exerting an outsize influence on the era’s debates over domestic and international affairs, they wrote and argued as if they were pounding the typewriter with their fists.     

These writers absorbed American norms about manhood on the streets, at the movies and in popular culture, which together shaped “a new intellectual culture that valued a combative stance shaped by a desire and need to perform a new kind of secular Jewish masculinity.” The paragon of the New York Intellectual, Irving Howe once wrote, valued “pride in argument, vanity of dialectic, a gleaming readiness for polemic” — which was probably a lot more fun for readers than for the targets of their aggression.  

Grinberg also writes about the women writers in this circle, often the wives of the gatekeepers, including Mary McCarthy, Elizabeth Hardwick and Diana Trilling. Not all were Jews, but they were willing to mix it up with the men in a style that came to be seen as distinctly Jewish. 

Such “secular Jewish masculinity” shaped the intellectual discourse and the marketplace where work by men was taken more seriously. My parents — my mother anyway — read Jewish books by women, although they tended to be bestselling authors whose work was rarely regarded as great literature: Belva Plain, Cynthia Freeman, Judith Krantz. I don’t remember them reading books by Anzia Yezierska, Grace Paley or Cynthia Ozick, important writers often excluded in the talk about a golden age for Jewish American literature.

Gordan, Mora and Grinberg describe the forces that shaped Jewish identity, as well as reading tastes, in the 20th century: assimilation and acceptance, gender, the Cold War. Gordan explores how the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel also influenced the postwar literary era — the former by shaming or at least marginalizing antisemites, the latter by casting a glow of triumph and even cockiness over Jews living in the Diaspora. 

What books would capture the Jewish vibes of the 21st century? In 2020 Yehuda Kurtzer and Claire E. Sufrin put together an anthology called “The New Jewish Canon,” attempting to catalogue the books and articles that represent the “Jewish intellectual and communal zeitgeist.” Among the 70 or so picks, only two could be called bestsellers: “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” by Harold Kushner and Joseph Telushkin’s “Jewish Literacy.”

It’s increasingly hard to talk about a Jewish community when Jews are split along denominational, political and ethnic lines, and when the Holocaust and Israel are fading as forces that bind Jews to one another. My parents didn’t agree with their fellow Jews on everything, but they saw themselves in common cause. Their books they bought and read reflected this.

Perhaps the current lack of a common Jewish bookshelf of popular, middlebrow books is a good thing, hinting at a richly diverse community that can’t be captured between the covers of a handful of bestsellers.

Or maybe it points to an inability of a people to see themselves in each other, or agree on what they share.

Your turn: What books reflect our current Jewish moment — and which might you guess are on the shelves of even a plurality of American Jews? We’d like to hear from you: Suggest one or more general interest, scholarly and even cookbooks that have broken through to a wide readership and would tell a future historian what was on the minds of American Jews in the 2020s. Send your suggestions to asc@jta.org and put “Jewish Bookshelf” in the subject line.

Around the time Shane Langsam left their haredi Orthodox community in Brooklyn four years ago — shortly after a divorce and as they were beginning to trade dresses for pants and eat non-kosher food — they connected on Facebook with a kindred spirit, Jood Barnett.

Barnett had left a similar environment years earlier, and the two became a couple and moved in together. But they hid their relationship from their religious Jewish landlord, saying they were just friends, and kept up appearances to fit into the neighborhood — covering their windows on Shabbat to hide their use of electricity.

Things went well until the landlord’s wife entered the apartment to make a repair and saw that there was only one bed.

“They were nice to Jood. They would even invite us, to cook us our Shabbos meal, come for a holiday meal,” Langsam said. “But once they saw us as a couple, that was it.”

Soon after that, the landlord became hostile and sought to raise their rent by 15% — nearly double the city’s average rent increase this year. The landlord also refused to make repairs to the apartment and locked them out of the building’s laundry room, said the couple, who both use they/them pronouns. 

The couple, who both work with special needs populations but were not employed at the time due to health issues, wanted to move but couldn’t afford a rent increase nor the cost of moving.

“When you leave, the community doesn’t support you and you don’t have the finances you need” for housing, Barnett said.

The couple’s problems with housing are typical of those who leave haredi communities, according to Naomi Moskowitz, director of economic empowerment at Footsteps, a New York nonprofit that helps its 2,400 members who have left haredi Orthodox Jewish communities.

In haredi communities, the norm is for people to live with their parents until marriage, or study in a residential yeshiva, then move in with their spouse — all the while relying on tight networks of family and communal support as well as, in some cases, public assistance. 

Those who leave are often cut off from that social safety net, and find themselves searching for an affordable place to live in a city where housing is becoming scarcer and rents higher. Some of those who leave the community also lack secular education and job skills, compounding the challenges in creating a fresh start.  

So Moskowitz is spearheading a new program to help Footsteps members acquire stable housing, which she said is a “key cornerstone” for those transitioning out of their communities.

“Somebody who already was sort of kicked out, for whatever reason, needs a job to be able to continue figuring out how to function and live in this world, but then it’s difficult to find a job if you don’t know where you’re sleeping, and it’s difficult to pay for rent,” Moskowitz said. “You get stuck in this loop.”

Moskowitz said Footsteps members, and their living situations, do not fit any one single profile before they leave their communities. There are 19-year-olds looking to start college, parents who live with their children and need to stay in the vicinity of their schools, and 65-year-olds who are “starting a new part of their journey,” she said. Haredi communities in New York are diverse, both financially and in terms of religious and cultural practices, from traditionalist Hasidic movements to “Yeshivish” non-Hasidic communities.

There is likewise no established playbook for finding housing for new Footsteps members, she said. While some leave their community after years of planning, and have some money saved up for rent, others lean on a secular relative or end up drifting from couch to couch at acquaintances’ homes.

When Moskowitz left her Yeshivish community in 2013, she was a 28-year-old single mother of three who was struggling financially while working for nonprofits, without family support. She put herself through college and a master’s program, and started working for Footsteps in 2020 “to help people traveling similar paths that I have traveled,” she said.

The genesis for the housing idea came during the pandemic, when Moskowitz set up a crisis fund with money from donors and foundations. The fund was created to aid members facing a range of economic or mental health challenges. Four years in, though, around 80% of the more than $500,000 it distributed to around 300 recipients went to people with housing needs, including to Langsam and Barnett. 

This isn’t Footsteps first housing initiative: Beginning in 2006, the organization rented a dorm room at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan — which had on-site housing and other support for residents — to provide members a place to sleep during short transitions. But few Footsteps members used the program and the organization did not have the funding to keep it going long-term. The partnership ended a few years later. 

Moskowitz acknowledged that housing is “sort of a big beast to tackle” — both because of its cost in New York and because the organization wants its members to be self-sufficient, something long-term rent assistance would work against. Previously, the group had focused on fields like career services, educational support and providing community. 

But with $6 million in total contributions over the year ending in October 2023, and a staff of more than 30, Moskowitz said Footsteps felt like it was in a place where it could begin to bolster its housing programs.  

The organization organized a list of New York City housing support programs, did interviews with other non-profits to learn about their offerings and successful programs, worked with consultants and surveyed members. At first, the staff discussed renting apartments for members to use, but members’ diverse housing needs made that unworkable. 

Moskowitz added, “People getting to choose where they want to live is a big, big piece of somebody’s independence.”

The program is getting off the ground as New York renters struggle with a housing crunch due to a shortage of available apartments. A report from Douglas Elliman showed that the median rent in Brooklyn is $3,650, up from $2,800 at the end of 2021, a strain for New Yorkers earning the median salary in the city of around $76,000. The vacancy rate, or the percentage of rental units that are unoccupied, is around 1.4%, the lowest rate in decades. The average up-front cost to move into an apartment last year was $10,454, according to a study by the StreetEasy rental platform.

The high costs place pressure on haredi communities that are growing quickly due to large family sizes. Haredi families have long sought more affordable housing outside the city in locations such as New Jersey and Rockland County. Orthodox Jews, who do not drive on Shabbat, also prioritize living within walking distance of a synagogue, leading communities to congregate in the same neighborhoods. 

Nishma Research, a group that surveys U.S. Orthodox Jews, said in a 2021 report that around one-third of haredi Jews reported that their home’s location had a “significant negative impact” on their household budget. 

Some haredi groups assist their community members with housing. The UJO of Williamsburg and North Brooklyn, based in the Satmar Hasidic community, assists area residents with applying for public housing benefits and other programs. The Crown Heights Central Jewish Community Council in the Chabad Hasidic community assists residents with renter’s rights advocacy and manages some apartments.

Other Jewish groups also provide housing support. The Met Council, a leading Jewish charity group, manages 1,200 housing units for low-income elderly people, both Jewish and non-Jewish. The Jewish Board, a social services group, provides housing support for New Yorkers living with mental illness. 

“Rents in our area are getting out of control,” the Crown Heights Central Jewish Community Council advises on its website, adding that its apartments “are rented at affordable rates” and that people in a certain income range can apply. 

But it cautions, “Apartments become available once in a while, and we have a waiting list of applicants.”

Footsteps also learned in its research phase that it wasn’t the only group helping with housing crises: The city has an array of housing support programs, though the system is difficult to navigate. So, in addition to the housing fund, Footsteps is looking to hire a full-time housing navigator to help members access existing support programs. In the meantime, it is referring members to groups such as Neighbors Together, a social services group in Brooklyn. 

To date, the Footsteps’ housing program has distributed $80,000 to 51 members, Moskowitz said — an average of roughly $1,600 per person. The program does not pay members’ rent. Instead, it provides one-time stipends of $1,500 to $2,000 per individual for temporary needs such as a broker’s fee, moving costs or a security deposit. Members who have an apartment and are in a financial crunch due to a health crisis, for example, would also be able to apply for funding to help them get through the crisis.

“It’s not a large amount of money, but it’s enough to help somebody make that first step,” Moskowitz said. “So if somebody has a job and they’re ready, they know they can pay their rent, but they can’t come up with that big lump sum, the housing fund will help people make that jump.”

Alex Schwartz, a professor of urban policy at the New School who researches housing, said the initiative was similar to the “One Shot Deal” emergency cash assistance program from the city, which offers funding if people face challenges including nearly losing their housing or having their utilities shut off. But he said it is not a long-term solution. 

“It may be a godsend for some people. Let’s say they have a job but they don’t have the savings to pay the brokerage fee,” Schwartz said of the Footsteps program, which he is not affiliated with. “It isn’t going to help if someone is unemployed or if it’s a mother with several young children and they don’t have the ability to work as well as pay for child care.”

He added, “It assumes they have the ability to generate the income necessary to afford rent and that’s a huge assumption.”

But Schwartz said the city’s housing crunch has been a chronic problem — “the need is just gigantic,” he said — and nonprofits that focus on it have long had a difficult time finding donors as they compete with other aid groups.

Moskowitz said there is not a specific goal for how much Footsteps plans to scale up the housing program, but she pointed to the organization’s educational scholarships program as an example. At first, the scholarships program distributed $15,000 to seven members, but grew as more members became aware of the program, and now grants around $500,000 per year.

The program will benefit members like Barnett and Langsam as they seek stable accommodation. Barnett’s experience is a case study in the challenges Footsteps members face. 

After leaving their community around 10 years ago, Barnett bounced between friends’ and relatives’ homes. They rented a room, but the roommate stole their deposit, leaving them homeless, they said. Barnett qualified for public housing for those with mental health issues due to their past diagnoses for depression and PTSD, and was placed in a public housing program with a roommate who suffered from delusions, sometimes shouting at their hallucinations. 

Barnett ended up in a hospital, then a group home, where they said they were harassed by other residents. Eventually their family offered support after finding out about their living situation, and gave Barnett money for a security deposit, letting them get the apartment where Langsam later moved in at the end of 2022.

Moskowitz overheard the couple discussing their housing issues at a Footsteps event, and told them about the crisis fund. Barnett and Langsam applied for the funding, and each received a stipend, one for $1,500 to pay for a moving truck and another for $1,800 to cover most of a security deposit.

The couple, who recently published a book based on their life experiences, signed a lease on a first-floor apartment elsewhere in Brooklyn. When they moved in, their pet cat jumped to the apartment’s broad window to enjoy the view. They have a warm relationship with their landlord, sharing food with him that they prepare for the holidays. Their neighbors greet them when they take their cat outside for a walk in a stroller. 

“We were able to start over from trauma, to healing and to living,” Langsam said. “It’s just a pleasure to be in an area [where] you feel wanted, and you’re there and you could just live.”

For more than six decades, Simon Panzer has come to swim meets across Austria wearing a Star of David on his chest.

The symbol represents two aspects of Panzer’s identity: his Judaism, and his membership in Hakoah Sports Club, which was founded by Jews in the Austrian capital in 1909.

The club, like others across Europe, fields both amateur and professional sports teams across a range of age groups and acts as a social hub for its members. Today, it is a source of pride for the city’s 14,000 Jewish residents, with a legacy that Panzer calls “absolutely impressive.”

But nowadays, he and other members feel a range of emotions about the club’s longtime symbol.

Panzer says he is proud of the Star of David, “but at the same time also scared, in particular since the Gaza war.” He has stopped wearing it outside swim meets. Club president Thomas Loewy, meanwhile, remembers a time when the star was “very stigmatized” and said, “I wear the Star of David proudly as part of our club.”

And for Hakoah member Anna Dragolava, the dilemma is especially layered — because she isn’t Jewish.

“I did wonder if it was appropriate for me as a non-Jew to wear this symbol,” she said, “but I intend to represent it with the respect it deserves.”

The varying perspectives on the symbol are one way in which Hakoah, Hebrew for “the strength,” represents the rebirth of Vienna’s Jewish community — and how its place in the city is changing. Reconstituted following the Holocaust, the club has seen a run of success in recent years.

Its mandate has transformed since its founding years: Created as a space for Jewish athletes who were excluded from other clubs, it now welcomes members of all backgrounds, most of whom aren’t Jewish, and promotes inclusion and diversity.

“Although we see ourselves as a contact for the Jewish community in sporting matters, we do not keep statistics on how many members are Jewish or not,” Loewy said. “Everyone is warmly welcome here. My goal as president is to further expand Hakoah as a platform for exchange and understanding.”

The club is now mostly known for its swimmers. Standout athletes include Aviva Hollinsky, 16 — a member of Austria’s junior national swim team, who won last year’s 400m individual medley at the Austrian national championships — as well as her brother Gideon, one of Austria’s top backstrokers. Their mother, Simone Hollinsky, swam briefly with Hakoah in the late 1980s.

Loewy, 58, likewise, won silver in the 100m freestyle and gold in the 50m fly at the European Masters Championships held in Belgrade this past summer, setting Austrian age-group records in both.

Hakoah’s junior swim team secured first place at the Austrian Junior Outdoor Championships this year, and both the junior and youth teams have placed among the top teams in Austria at both indoor and outdoor individual and team championships. Hakoah’s masters, or 18-and-over, team won the Austrian championship in 2021 and 2023, and came in third in 2022.

Its return to prestige has been unlikely. At the time of the club’s founding, roughly 200,000 Jews lived in Vienna, which was then led by Mayor Karl Lueger, whose antisemitism is sometimes described as a precursor to Adolf Hitler. By the 1920s, it had 5,000 members, making it the country’s largest athletic club, and its soccer team had attained international fame, at one point winning the country’s national championship. Its renown was such that in 1929 some former players who had relocated to the United States adopted the team’s name without permission — leading to threats from the Vienna club.

In 1936, three of its star swimmers — Judith Deutsch, Ruth Langer and Lucie Goldner — famously boycotted the Berlin Olympics, protesting Hitler’s rise to power. When the Nazis annexed Austria two years later, they shuttered Hakoah, seizing assets that included nearly eight acres of land with a stadium, athletic facilities and a clubhouse.

After the war, a tiny group of Jews who had somehow either survived in the city or returned began to revive Hakoah. For Loewy, that legacy is personal: His father, dentist Herbert Loewy, had survived the Holocaust as a so-called “U-boat,” hidden “underground” by his Catholic grandparents in Vienna.

“My father breathed life back into Hakoah with his friends after the war,” Loewy said. “Only a few had the strength and will to rebuild the club after the Holocaust.”

Loewy said the club was left with “a completely dilapidated Sports Club Hakoah hut in the mountains near Vienna.” But he added, “For my father and other returnees, it was a place to catch up on lost youth and revive club life.”

In 2002, Hakoah recovered land near its original site in Vienna’s Prater Park as part of a reparation settlement, helping expand it. Its new center, completed in March 2008, includes a three-section multipurpose sports and event hall, fitness center with wellness area, outdoor tennis courts, beach volleyball, and a small pool.

A punny poster outside the club reflects its new approach: “You don’t have to be Jewish to be fit,” it says. Today, its 800 members, 500 of whom train competitively across a range of sports, reflect Vienna’s broad mix of cultures and backgrounds.

“Hakoah swimmers come from nearly all continents and from all major religions, said Erich Hille, president of the swim section. “Like many sports clubs, we make an important contribution to integration, mutual understanding and tolerance.”

Its Jewish history still holds significance to some members who cherish past family connections or take pride in their Jewish identity. Masters swimmer Robert Beig’s uncle, Otto “Schloime” Fischer, played on the soccer team from 1926 to 1930. Panzer’s father was a member of the Hakoah wrestling team before the war. Panzer, born in Israel, has been a member of Hakoah since he was 8, when his family moved back to Vienna.

“As a not religious person, being a member of a Jewish sport club is a good way to demonstrate my identity,” said Anita Weichberger, a psychotherapist who grew up in Hungary.

Other masters swimmers are drawn to the club primarily for its welcoming atmosphere and the opportunity to compete.

“As a non-Jewish person, the club’s Jewish identity wasn’t a deciding factor for me to join,” said Dragolovova, who recently joined after moving to Vienna from the Czech Republic. “What mattered most was the positive atmosphere and the chance to swim.”

Long-distance swimmer Norbert Nagl, who holds two of Hakoah’s age-group records, contended, “Religion and politics should have nothing to do with sports.”

While the club has changed since it was founded more than a century ago, it still acts as a center of community and social life for its members, even if they look different than they once did.

“Hakoah is more than just a place to swim,” said Ruth Pataki, a swimmer who heads the club’s Masters Section. “It’s defined by its history, team spirit, and the community of swimmers from different nationalities and religions.”

Israeli journalist Barak Ravid drew gasps this month when he told the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly, “We are much closer to Israeli settlements being built in Gaza than hostages coming home from Gaza.” This is hardly news to anyone paying attention to Israeli governmental policy, but it introduced an unwanted chill into a conference that aimed to focus on “Jewish unity” and unspecified “support for Israel.”

Like other American Jews with strong connections to Israel, and dozens of friends and family members there, I have spent many a sleepless night worrying about the fate of the country, and furiously WhatsApping loved ones there to check on their safety. We may want to believe that Israeli leaders are trying to do what is best for their country and its residents. When we see news of yet another teenage soldier killed in Gaza or Lebanon, we want to believe that their sacrifice is not in vain but is making Israel safer.

But this is not a moment for surprise or for more rousing shows of vague “support for Israel.” It is a moment for anyone who cares about the future of the country and the people who live there to sound the alarm and wake each other up.

The settler movement has achieved a full takeover of the Israeli government, and they make no secret of their intentions: to resettle Gaza and officially annex the West Bank. Israeli leadership views the election of Donald Trump as clearing the path for this goal. Israel’s Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich said as much explicitly earlier this month. This past Sukkot, Likud members of Knesset took part in a conference on resettling Gaza held in a closed military zone meters from the strip, with the IDF protecting participants while pushing back hostage families who had come to protest.

High level Israeli officials have testified that Netanyahu has entirely abandoned the hostages and torpedoed any attempt to free them. Instead, he is continuing the war to advance his political survival and to allow for the reoccupation and resettlement of Gaza. One of his high level aides has been arrested on suspicion of passing information to a German newspaper, allegedly at the  prime minister’s behest, in order to sway public opinion against a hostage deal. Even former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, fired apparently for supporting such a deal, has said publicly that there is no reason for the war to continue and that Israel is on its way to military occupation of Gaza.

There is increasing evidence that the army is implementing the “Generals’ Plan,” which aims to displace all 300,000-400,000 residents of Northern Gaza by preventing any humanitarian assistance from entering, bombarding the territory, preventing residents from returning and re-establishing an Israeli military occupation, followed inevitably by resettlement.

Meanwhile, Gaza itself has become a humanitarian disaster. More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed — yes, including militants and terrorists, but also including thousands of children and entire families. The U.N. estimates that women and children make up 70% of those killed. Large-scale hunger and disease will likely only grow worse if and when Israel implements its recently passed laws that would prevent UNRWA,  the main U.N. agency serving Palestinians, from operating there. In the West Bank, settlers carry out near daily violence against Palestinian villagers and farmers, with near complete impunity, often with the protection or assistance of the army.

The news that the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant (along with Hamas’s Mohammed Deif, who is likely dead) engendered the expected cheers from the global left and defensive outrage from the Jewish and Israeli establishment. But for anyone who cares about Israel’s future, these arrest warrants should be cause for deep sadness and alarm. It is a tragic moment when the prime minister of the Jewish state has sunk so low — and brought the country so low — that he can credibly be accused of war crimes, while simultaneously torpedoing any internal inquiry that could have staved off the ICC warrants.

In early 2023, it seemed like the electoral ascendency of Israeli extremist parties, combined with the mass anti-government protests that rocked Israel, might shock mainstream American Jewry out of their usual uncritical support. A September 2023 protest against Netanyahu’s speech to the United Nations drew thousands of Israeli expats and American Jews, including prominent rabbis and communal leaders. Even some legacy Jewish organizations, not accustomed to criticizing Israel, registered their disapproval of the attempted judicial overhaul.

The horrific massacres of Oct. 7 moved many American Jews back into the more familiar narrative of “Israel under attack.” The shocking willingness of some pro-Palestine activists to justify or deny Hamas’s atrocities and to dehumanize Israelis, coupled with a rise in violence against Jews and Jewish institutions, channeled communal energy into fighting antisemitism. And the real threat from Iran, including direct missile attacks as well as more than a year of rocket fire from Hezbollah before this week’s truce, has generated existential fear for Israel.

Mourning and fear must not distract us from the reality that the biggest existential threat to Israel, and indeed to Judaism itself, is coming from Israel’s governing coalition. Israel is not an object of worship or vehicle for Jewish identity. It is a real country with an increasingly authoritarian government committed to perpetual war and settlement. This is both a moral travesty and a danger to the state and to Judaism.

More than 50 years ago, the religious Israeli philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz warned, “A calf doesn’t necessarily need to be golden; it can also be a people, a land, or a state.” Jews wearing kippahs and tzitzit who ransack Palestinian villages, sometimes even violating the basic laws of Shabbat to do so, who recite Shema while burning down a mosque, or who build a sukkah in a Palestinian village or in the middle of Gaza, have replaced worship of God with worship of power and sovereignty. They would happily destroy the actual state of Israel in order to achieve their dangerous vision of Jewish control over the entire biblical land of Israel, no matter the human or political cost.

Three decades ago, Prime Minister Netanyahu famously accused the left of “forgetting what it means to be a Jew.” But it is Netanyahu and his allies who have forgotten the basic foundations of Judaism. These include pidyon shevuyim — redeeming captives — considered one of the most important commandments, and the most basic commitment of a Jewish state, not to abandon its own people.

Some American Jews believe that we have no right to comment on matters of Israeli security, or that any criticism of Israel fuels antisemitism. And yet, too much of the American Jewish community gives a pass to organizations that have supported Netanyahu’s drive toward autocracy and settlements, and even refused the pleas of hostage families to call for a deal that will end the war in Gaza and bring their loved ones home. American Jews must not stand by as Israel descends into authoritarianism and messianism which are doing irreversible, generational damage. Supporting Israel can no longer mean sporting flag pins, attending “unity” rallies, or trying to shut down any speech critical of Israel.

Rather, support for Israel and its people must mean standing with the Israelis desperately working to save their country from fanaticism, never-ending war and the settler agenda. Painful though it certainly is, supporting Israel today requires setting aside our disbelief that Israeli leaders could act with total disregard for the wellbeing of Israelis, let alone Palestinians. It means no longer giving Netanyahu and his ministers the endless benefit of the doubt.

American Jews can begin by sending our charitable dollars to the brave Israeli civil society organizations rather than to groups that explicitly or implicitly promote settlement and anti-democratic legislation. It means putting pressure on both the Netanyahu government and the U.S. administrations — outgoing and incoming — to end the war. We can demand that the U.S. follow its own laws and require Israel to adhere to the same guidelines for military aid that other countries do, including ensuring transparency in how aid is used. This includes enforcing the deadline for increasing the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Such measures are not an abdication of the security of Israelis, but rather a means of pressuring Netanyahu to end the war and bring home the hostages, allowing Israel to move toward internal investigations and new elections. And we can insist that our communal organizations stop burying their heads in the sand and instead push back on the Israeli government’s dangerous agenda.

It’s time for American Jews to take a strong moral stance for human life and human rights. This would be the truest expression of support for Israel and Israelis, as well as Torah and Judaism.