“We see a city of contradictions within a nation of contradictions. We see the wealthiest country in the history of the world—one where children go to sleep hungry while the world’s first trillionaire hungers for more,” the mayor said on Friday ahead of July 4.

“We see monopolies that dominate every industry and oligarchs who buy elections. We see masked agents terrorizing our streets, eating food cooked by our undocumented neighbors before spiriting them away in unmarked vans,” he added. “We see a nation whose immense wealth has been built by those with calloused, dirt-streaked hands— those who toil on factory floors and chisel into stone—and we see a nation that has allowed so much of that wealth to be held instead in the soft hands of a precious few.”

Rabbi Menachem Levine, CEO of Joan Dachs Bais Yaakov–Yeshivas Tiferes Tzvi, a 70-year-old Orthodox school in Chicago, told JNS that Mamdani’s approach, in which he began by referring to the United States as a place of opportunity and “a grand experiment in self-governance,” evokes the tactics of the biblical spies, whom Moses sent to scout out the Holy Land.

The spies returned bearing enormous fruits and told the Israelites that the land was good and then pivoted to information that it was inhabited by giants, who saw the men as grasshoppers. Because the spies led the people to fear entering the Holy Land, God forced almost the entire generation to wander for 40 years in the desert—one year for each day of the mission of the spies—until each person had died before their descendants could enter the Holy Land.

Per rabbinic tradition, the spies “began by acknowledging the land’s physical beauty, thereby lending credibility to their subsequent falsehoods regarding its inhabitants,” Levine told JNS.

“Ultimately, his objective is to dismantle the existing social order,” he said of the New York City mayor. “However, he has unfortunately considerable political acumen and is a significant threat.”

Mark Goldfeder, an Orthodox rabbi and CEO and director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, told JNS that “Judaism invented institutionalized national self-criticism, so the objection is not that a leader criticized his country.”

“It’s how and why and when,” Goldfeder said.

The Talmud “contrasts two people welcomed at the same table,” Goldfeder told JNS. “One says, ‘Look how much trouble my host went to, and all of it for me.’ The other says, ‘What trouble did my host really go to? He ate his own bread. Whatever he did, he did for himself and his household.’”

He advised reading Mamdani’s speech with that template in mind. “You will see it is built exactly like the second guy’s toast,” Goldfeder said. “Every American generosity gets recharacterized as extraction.”

Those who defend the New York City mayor will say that there is a “some kernel of truth” in everything that he said, according to Goldfeder.

“Sure. The spies Moses sent into Canaan also told the truth. The Talmud points out that slander only takes hold when it opens with truth, and it still counted the spies’ report among the gravest sins in the national record,” he told JNS. “The facts were right. The verdict was the sin.”

Standing on the threshold of the Promised Land, the spies “assembled some technically accurate observations into a case against the entire enterprise,” Goldfeder said. “The mayor did the same thing at the threshold of the country’s 250th year.”

“Judaism never tamed national self-criticism by suppressing it. It tamed it with a calendar,” he said. “There is an entire fast day, Tisha B’Av, set aside for the national indictment, when Jews sit on the floor and read the catalogue of their own failures out loud. And precisely because that day exists, Passover is not allowed to become a seminar on them.”

“Eulogies are barred on festivals for the same reason,” Goldfeder told JNS. “July 4 is the festival, and he went ahead and gave the eulogy.”

Rabbi David Wolpe, rabbi emeritus of Sinai Temple, a Conservative synagogue in Los Angeles, told JNS that it was “foolish” for Mamdani to make the statement that the “powerful have always known their answer” and that “America, in their view, is an arena of supremacy, where only a select few are allowed freedom, where not all are created equal.”

“To speak of the powerful as a block not only betrays the many powerful people who created the rights and economic dynamism and hope that he celebrates but neglects the reality that he is among the powerful,” Wolpe said.

“A less thoughtful and more self-sabotaging statement would be hard to imagine,” he told JNS. “When the Torah says, ‘Do not favor the rich or poor in judgement,’ it is arguing against this exact lumping of people into a category simply to excoriate them.”

Rabbi Yaakov Menken, executive vice president of the Coalition for Jewish Values, told JNS that he is reminded of a different biblical episode when he listens to the New York City mayor’s July 4 speech: Jacob’s prayer in Genesis 32, imploring God to “save me from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau.”

Chaim ibn Attar, an 18th century Moroccan rabbi and Kabbalist, explained that Jacob was praying for protection from his enemy Esau even if the latter came to him as “my brother,” according to Menken.

“He is dangerous either way. The same can be said of Mamdani,” he told JNS. “Much of what he says is historically wrong, and his characterization of businesses today is no better.”

Mamdani “admits honestly that Syrians do not come here to escape persecution, yet lists Muslims before Jews among those ‘banished for praying the wrong way,’” Menken said. “There is no comparison, of course. The overwhelming bulk of Muslim experience with persecution is as perpetrators, with ‘infidels’ like America’s Jews and Christians as their victims. But that is a truth he has no interest in sharing.”

Rabbi Daniel Friedman, professor of international relations at Touro University and a rabbi at Park East Synagogue, a Modern Orthodox congregation in Manhattan, told JNS that the notion of American “exceptionalism” requires clarification.

“My family did not arrive by boat, although we saw the Statue of Liberty from the window of the plane,” Mamdani said in his speech. “There is a term so often used to describe our nation and those who have shaped it: ‘American exceptionalism.’”

“American exceptionalism, the conventional wisdom tells us, makes our freedom a little more free, is how we dug the Erie Canal and irrigated the West, is why children in faraway lands grow up dreaming of one day moving here,” the mayor said. “The irony is that the story of America has so often been written by those who were told by others with power and influence and wealth that they were anything but exceptional.”

“We are told that America is exceptional because we are richer, stronger, more powerful than everyone else,” Mamdani added. “The truth, my friends, is that America is exceptional because here, nothing is fixed into place.”

Being richer, stronger and more powerful is not what American exceptionalism is about, nor is it about thinking that nothing is fixed and that the newest Americans hold the “special power” to “determine what America means,” according to Friedman.

He told JNS that the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, a former chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth and former member of the British House of Lords, differentiated between social contracts and covenants.

“A contract is rooted in mutual self-interest. Individuals cooperate because doing so benefits each person,” Friedman told JNS. “A covenant, by contrast, is a moral commitment, in which people accept responsibility for one another and for a shared future.”

“Rabbi Sacks believed that America’s exceptionalism lay in its covenantal character,” he said. “Unlike many nation-states that were united by ethnicity, language or ancient territorial identity and held together primarily by political institutions, the United States was forged largely by immigrants, who embraced a common moral vision centered on liberty under God, personal responsibility and the dignity of every human being.”

The festival, which was initially launched three-and-a-half decades ago for a non-Jewish audience in a country where Jews were decimated during the Holocaust, was held amid a wave of global antisemitism across the globe, spurred by the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on southern Israel and as a new generation of young Poles has discovered a shared past in their mixed history.

“We seek to reintroduce the Jewish contribution to Polish culture to mainstream Polish society after many decades under Communism, where Jewish issues were banned in the country, and people didn’t know that Jewish contributed so much to our heritage,” Krakow Jewish Festival director Robert Gadek told JNS. “The paradox is that Poland is perceived abroad as a very antisemitic country, and here you have a Jewish festival that is being held in the open air, and everyone feels safe.”

Some three million Polish Jews were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust, about 90 percent of the pre-World War II population.

Homage to the city’s storied Jewish past

The annual festival was launched in 1988, just before the fall of Communism, as a homage to the city’s Jewish past and its cultural contributions. It gathered steam over the last quarter century when a new generation of Poles in this homogeneous Roman Catholic country was awakened to the long-hidden Jewish history, brought to life by Steven Spielberg’s 1993 Academy Award-winning film Schindler’s List, which transformed local tourism in the city.

“The discovery of Jewish roots in Poland is quite normal,” said Jonathan Ornstein, executive director of the Jewish Community Center in Krakow, which is a partner in the festival. “Grandchildren are finding out who their grandparents are and are now acting on it.”

Only about 100 Polish Jews live in Krakow, a city which was home to 70,000 Jews before World War II, all but 5,000 of whom were murdered during the Holocaust.

In recent years, the minuscule Jewish population in the city has grown by the hundreds with the addition of Ukrainian Jews fleeing the war with Russia, and Jews relocating from other places in Europe.

Ornstein said that some Jews in Western Europe are asking themselves if they should live in a place that was unsafe for their grandparents or a safe place for their children.

‘A Jewish and an Israeli cultural festival’

Held annually in Krakow’s historic former Jewish quarter, Kazimierz, the five-day festival, which concluded on Sunday evening, featured about 180 events, including concerts, workshops, lectures, tours and exhibitions.

The festival, whose budget is $800,000, is primarily sponsored by the city of Krakow and the Polish Ministry of Culture, alongside two American Jewish Foundations, an Israeli-American Foundation, private donors and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Its popular mass outdoor concert, which has long been the highlight of the event, has been canceled since COVID, both due to security and economic considerations, the festival director said.

While in its first years the festival was predominantly attended by Poles and focused on Klezmer music, it has since been broadened to include trendy Mizrahi music and artists and now attracts about 70 percent Poles and 30 percent international tourists from around the world, led by Israel.

“We say we are a very Israeli festival because Israel is the real place where Jewish culture in its full authenticity grows,” Gadek said.

‘We need more of what unites us’

The festival director noted that the gathering is being held at a time when antisemitism is getting worse, even in now-safe Poland.

“There are more spaces in public life where antisemitism has become much more acceptable,” he said. "Now hate speech is part of the public discourse.”

“Compared to what we see going on in Europe, Poland is much more tolerant of Jews,” Israeli Ambassador to Poland Yaakov Finkelstein told JNS. “Most Poles are aware of Jewish culture, which was part of their culture, and this event is a reminder that we need to do more of what unites us instead of what divides us.”

“As a non-Jewish supporter, it was especially moving to attend this event at this time of global antisemitism, and to have this deep and powerful experience,” said Anne-Marie Glover, 61, of Cincinnati, Ohio, who volunteered with the JCC for the event.

Israeli volunteer Nadav Gabai, 22, who came to the festival straight after his Israeli military service, said he saw how culture can bring two different peoples together.

“During this festival, I saw how our Jewish culture can be a reason for celebration and could unite Jews and Poles as one,” he said.

That does not make the underlying intuition expressed by the phrase false. Jewish ideas helped shape the West. Ethical monotheism, the supremacy of law over rulers, the dignity of the individual and the prophetic critique of power all entered the moral vocabulary of Europe and America through Judaism. No serious account of Western civilization can deny that inheritance.

Writers like JNS senior contributor Melanie Phillips and Josh Hammer are right to insist on this point. They argue, in somewhat different ways, that Western civilization rests on a Jewish-Christian civilizational foundation and that the West’s Jewish roots remain indispensable to its survival. 

“Judeo-Christian values” does more than acknowledge Jewish influence; it converts influence into fusion. It takes a long, complicated record of borrowing, divergence and conflict, and repackages it into a seamless civilizational inheritance. In doing so, it compresses big theological differences into a convenient cultural brand.

The term itself is also much newer than its rhetoric implies. In its familiar American form, the phrase “Judeo-Christian” rose to prominence in the 1930s and 1940s as liberal Protestants, Catholics and Jews sought a common vocabulary to fight against fascism and antisemitism. The phrase hardened during the Cold War into a slogan that could counter “godless communism.” When Dwight Eisenhower declared in 1952 that the American system rested on “the Judeo-Christian concept,” he was using a political idiom of his era, not invoking a timeless consensus.

That matters because the phrase is the product of a difficult history. For most of the last two millennia, Jews were not treated as equal partners in Christendom’s moral project. They were more often tolerated outsiders, subject to periodic exclusion, coercion and persecution. As scholar Malka Simkovich has observed, the phrase “Judeo-Christian” elides a painful history marked by a profound power imbalance between Jews and Christians.

That is the first problem. The second is theological. “Judeo-Christian values” implies a shared moral and religious tradition. In practice, it often resolves in favor of Christian assumptions on which Judaism and Christianity remain fundamentally divided: covenant, law, redemption and the Messiah.

Critics of the phrase have long argued that it expresses a supersessionist logic, treating Judaism as a precursor fulfilled by Christianity rather than as an autonomous and continuing faith. Arthur A. Cohen called the “Judeo-Christian tradition” a myth because theological opposition cannot honestly be recast as a single shared tradition.

The political consequences of this are no longer abstract. Texas now requires public school classrooms to display a state-prescribed version of the Ten Commandments, using language drawn from the King James Bible associated with the Protestant tradition rather than Jewish formulations.

That is precisely how “Judeo-Christian values” rhetoric is weaponized. The language sounds inclusive, but the policy is not. The “Judeo” vanishes in the implementation, while Jewish identity is invoked to give a Christian text broader cultural legitimacy. This mutes the distinctiveness of Judaism itself.

As the phrase is used today, “Judeo-Christian values” rarely functions as a neutral description of intellectual history. More often, it serves as a boundary marker, defining who belongs inside the moral community of “the West” and who stands outside it. 

None of this denies the real connection between Judaism and Christianity, or the immense Jewish contribution to the American experiment. It simply demands precision. If the point is to describe Jewish sources of Western law, ethics and constitutional thought, that can be done directly. Slogans are not substitutes for history.

The phrase “Judeo-Christian values” was formulated as an attempt to express solidarity in a dark time. In contemporary use, it too often obscures Jewish distinctiveness, launders a painful past and turns a serious civilizational argument into a partisan talking point. That should be reason enough to retire it.

Titled "Grateful Are We: An American Jewish Declaration for America's 250th," the letter states that the United States "did not merely tolerate Jewish life but made possible its flourishing."

"Here, Jewish immigrants arrived with little and built lives of dignity. Here, Jewish communities established synagogues, schools, charities, businesses and institutions of civic life," the leaders wrote. "Here, Jews rose not because success was guaranteed, but because freedom made striving possible.

Among the signatories are former U.S. special antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt, Conference of Presidents CEO William Daroff, American Jewish Committee CEO Ted Deutch, Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, Jewish Federations of North America CEO Eric Fingerhut, Orthodox Union Advocacy Center executive director Nathan Diament and AIPAC President Bernard Kaminetsky.

"We are proud to contribute to helping America more fully realize the promise of a more perfect union," the leaders state. "Grateful are we. Committed are we. Hopeful are we. God bless America."

Israel is being used by its enemies to divide them. The condition of their acceptance as Americans or Brits, they are being told, is to renounce the Jewish state.

Some are doing that. Others are staying solidly in support. Others still, badly gaslighted, are unsure what to think. All are now asking themselves the hitherto unthinkable question: whether there’s now a future for Jews in the United States or the United Kingdom.

Almost every day seems to bring yet another shock to the besieged Diaspora Jewish psyche.

In America, the Democratic Party is steadily recreating itself as the party of West-hating, Islamist-supporting antisemites. In the process, it’s making the destruction of Israel and the demonization of Zionists defining motifs of Democratic politics, as indeed, these have become throughout the progressive Western world.

In such circles, demonization of Israel has been mainstreamed. Appallingly, casting Israel as diabolical and the murder of Jews as accordingly understandable has been framed as conscience itself.

Antisemitism is no longer regarded as the most murderous bigotry in history. It has instead been reframed as an attempt by Jews to mask their own conspiracy against the public good and to conceal the crimes of the State of Israel.

Always unhinged, this witch-hunt has become totally deranged. Scott Wiener, a gay Jewish Californian Democratic senator, supports trans people, voted down a bill to ban pedophiles from office and accused Israel of genocide. Nevertheless, he was abused, harassed and hounded off a pro-trans rally by people screaming he had betrayed the “Queer” cause by refusing to call for Israel’s destruction.

Wiener may be an extreme example, but he points to a wider issue. Just as the hostile world is trying to use Israel and Zionism to split Jews across the Diaspora, the question is whether they are Jews in name only if they spurn Israel and Zionism.

The suggestion that the game is up for the Diaspora—and that the only future for Jews is to make aliyah and live in Israel—often provokes a furious reaction among Jews in America and Britain.

Some of them are indifferent to or actively dislike Israel. Even those Jews who consider themselves Zionists because they support Israel (and may even have holiday homes there) mostly regard Zionism as an add-on to their all-important American or British identity.

The key neuralgic issue is peoplehood. For some Diaspora Jews, the Oct. 7 attacks made them realize how much they identified with Israel. They reached out to help. They felt the agony of the hostages and their families.

But that very connection made many of them aware of a more uncomfortable reality—that the fight for the life of the Jewish people was taking place in Israel. That was where a seismic chapter in Jewish history was unfolding. And Diaspora Jews weren’t part of it.

However much they may feel Israel’s pain, they don’t identify as the same people. The issues of Zionism and Israel are driving a wedge among Diaspora Jews because so many don’t feel that Israel is an integral part of their identity. They identify instead with America or Britain.

But in allowing themselves to have their Jewishness cherry-picked like this, Diaspora Jews have unwittingly become part of the West’s own existential crisis.

The West’s hostility to Israel is not just a manifestation of the oldest hatred. In turning on the Jewish people, it is, in effect, turning on itself.

For decades, the West has told itself that it was born in the original sins of colonialism, exploitation and whiteness, and that the Western nation state is itself a source of division, prejudice and war. Its elites have accordingly attacked the West’s foundational values, on the basis that particularism is the source of all ills and that liberal universalism is the only basis for justice, compassion and freedom in the world.

In attacking its own identity, the West has made two significant errors.

Telling itself that biblical values stood for all bad things, it failed to realize that the values by which virtually all rightly set such store—such as the equal dignity of every human being, putting the interests of others above your own, and the rule of law based on the consent of the people—are not universal, aren’t encoded within humankind’s DNA and weren’t bequeathed by the ancient Greeks. They derive from the Hebrew Bible, mediated through the foundational creed of Christianity. Western civilization therefore owes its greatness ultimately to Judaism.

The second failure of understanding is one that’s shared by many Diaspora Jews. Many assume that while antisemitism is bad because it attacks Jews as people, anti-Zionism is fine because Zionism is merely a political project, which it’s perfectly proper to oppose.

But anti-Zionism isn’t fine at all. It’s bad in itself because it singles out Israel for discriminatory treatment—systematic falsehoods, demonization and double standards designed to delegitimize and destroy it—meted out to no other country on earth.

More profoundly, Zionism is not a political cause. The religion of Judaism is itself inseparable from the land of Israel. Judaism consists of the belief by the Jewish people that they were given a Divine command to create a particular kind of society in the land that was promised to them.

Jewish religious liturgy is studded with countless references to Zion, the ancient Hebrew name for the land. Zionism, which emerged as a discrete political movement in the 19th century, is thus intrinsic to Judaism.

Of course, Jews who aren’t religiously observant are still Jews, just as are Jews who are anti-Zionist. But in Judaism, the people, the faith and the land are inextricably connected. Trying to pluck Zionism out of Judaism is to destroy it by plucking out its heart.

So, attacking the Jewish world is to attack the West; attacking Israel and Zionism is to attack Judaism.

Many Diaspora Jews won’t acknowledge this because the implications are too devastating. Especially in America, where the majority of Jews have signed up to anti-Jewish liberal ideologies, many of them will therefore dump Israel.

Observant Jews will remain loyal, and more of them will move to Israel. A number of progressive Jews, meanwhile, are agonized. Finding that their erstwhile comrades have now turned viciously against them over their support for Israel’s existence, they feel like politically homeless Jewish orphans.

It’s now more than 1,000 days since the terrible events of Oct. 7. During that traumatic period, which is still far from over, Israel has changed. It has returned to the biblical ideal of the heroic Jewish warrior nation.

This isn’t just because of its astounding military and intelligence prowess, or the awesome bravery of its fighting forces.

It’s also about its moral courage. It’s about the way it surmounted the devastating shattering of its security; the trauma of seeing so many of its precious and beautiful children fall in battle; the nightmarish return of the unspeakable shadow of the Holocaust, from whose ashes it had somehow emerged.

It’s about how it stared down disaster, demoralization and death, determined instead to fight for life—the life of its people in their ancient home.

Israelis fight to live because they passionately love what they are. They aren’t conditional Jews or Jews with trembling knees or confused Jews with hyphenated identities.

They are Jews who are made whole and complete by the land of Israel. They triumphantly reaffirm every single day what Judaism is: the faith and culture of a people created through a sacred covenant in their own land.

Oct. 7 and its aftermath forged the Israeli spirit anew in iron. Oct. 7 and its aftermath left Diaspora Jews terrified and uncertain about what they are.

The Israelis are fighting for the life of the Jewish people. Can Diaspora Jews say the same?

“The trends in this report demonstrate the vigor and success of Jewish day schools across the religious spectrum, the increase in their perceived quality and value and the impact of incredible investments in excellence, leadership, and teaching and affordability across our schools,” Paul Bernstein, founding CEO of Prizmah, stated in the report.

The report, released on June 24, analyzed enrollment at 305 Prizmah-network schools in the United States and Canada, including Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, community, pluralistic and nondenominational schools.

Most Chassidic, Chabad, Hareidi and yeshivish schools are not included in the report.

The data covers the 2021-22 to 2023-24 school years, during which there were seven new school openings, one school merger and four closures.

Enrollment growth was driven largely by existing schools, with new schools accounting for only 13% of the overall increase.

Since the 2021-22 academic year, enrollment in Jewish day schools and yeshivas in the Prizmah network rose from 94,008 students to a projected 101,041 students in 2025-26—an increase of more than 7,000 Jewish students, the report states.

The data highlights a “reversal” from a decades-long decline in non-Orthodox Jewish day school enrollment, previously documented in a 2020 census report by the Avi Chai Foundation, Prizmah wrote. Avi Chai’s census did not include Canadian schools.

Enrollment numbers were highest in Florida and the New York metropolitan area, with a 15% and 4% increase, respectively. Ontario also recorded record numbers, adding 306 students—a 4% increase.

Prizmah said that growth may have been helped by UJA Federation of Greater Toronto’s Generations Trust Scholarship, a long-term tuition relief program launched in 2021 for families that had not previously qualified for aid.

Bernstein told JNS that Prizmah wasn’t surprised by any of the major enrollment increases in Florida and New York, but given talk of people moving from the Northeast to Florida, some might not have anticipated the growth that took place in New York.

Across the United States, Prizmah schools added 4,222 students from 2021-22 to 2023-24. Canadian schools added 433 students.

Orthodox schools saw the largest increase with a 7% rise in student enrollment, which may be attributed to “birth rate,” the report states.

As a group, community, Conservative, Reform, pluralistic and nondenominational schools grew by 3%.

JNS asked Bernstein how Prizmah measures the significance of enrollment gains. He said that birthrates among non-Orthodox Jews have remained essentially flat since the last major American Jewish population data was released.

“The fact that day school enrollment has increased during that time really speaks volumes to the strength of the day school field,” he told JNS.

High enrollment numbers were recorded during the pandemic, as many Jewish day schools offered in-person learning at a time when many public schools were remote, according to the report. Still, Prizmah said that trend has continued beyond the pandemic years.

“Based on this analysis, Jewish day-school enrollment in North America is no longer just a pandemic-era spike,” the report states. “It is increasingly a sustained upward trend with a number of contributing factors.”

Other factors include heightened fears about Jew-hatred after Oct. 7, increased interest in Jewish identity, migration to areas with growing Jewish populations, like Florida, and the expansion of nonpublic-school scholarship programs, Prizmah wrote.

Since Oct. 7, families are “moving closer to Jewish community, enrolling children in Jewish schools and seeking out institutions that offer both belonging and confidence,” the report states.

“Families are not only worried about the increase in antisemitism, they are also choosing deeper Jewish connection through schools, synagogues, camps and community institutions as a proactive way to strengthen identity, continuity and resilience,” it said.

'This is such positive data'

In addition, after Oct. 7, 95% of 110 surveyed schools received inquiries about temporary Israeli students, with more than 2,000 inquiries logged between October and December 2023.

At least 1,037 Israeli students were enrolled in Prizmah schools during that time period, the report said.

Bernstein told JNS that the organization has “no concerns” about the data.

“This is such positive data,” he said. “Of course, we always want enrollment to continue trending upwards, and we’re driven by this to ensure our day schools have as large an educator pipeline as they need to draw from.”

“We need to continue scaling our proven educator training and support systems to meet this need,” he said.

Prizmah also hopes that “the growth will be experienced by all schools,” Bernstein said.

“In this regard, there is work to do to spread the positive appreciation of the quality and value of Jewish day schools in places that have not yet seen the expansion experienced by the majority,” he added.

Prizmah collected enrollment data from public databases, federal private-school data, its own benchmarking tool and surveys and direct outreach to school leaders.

Because some sources provided only total enrollment numbers, rather than grade-by-grade breakdowns, the report analyzed each school’s total enrollment from preschool through 12th grade.

Herzog is due to attend a state ceremony marking 85 years since the Iași pogrom, one of the worst massacres of Romanian Jewry during the Holocaust, in which thousands of Jews were murdered, according to the President’s Office.

The ceremony will be held at the city’s Jewish cemetery, where many of the pogrom’s victims lie in a mass grave.

Herzog is scheduled to attend a reburial ceremony for 22 victims of the pogrom whose remains were recently identified, after which he will visit the Holocaust museum and additional memorial sites in the city. On X, Herzog wrote "will hold meetings with President Nicușor Dan and Romania's political leadership, and address the joint plenary of the Romanian Parliament, where I will pay tribute to the longstanding friendship and cooperation between Israel and Romania."

Romanian Foreign Minister Toiu Oana wrote on X on Saturday about the pogrom, in which some 13,000 Jews were murdered. She did not mention Herzog’s visit.

“Over 13,000 Romanian Jews were killed in the city or on the "death trains". Romanian citizens, killed by a Romanian regime that many still heroize today by falsifying history. The truth cannot be avoided, it must be assumed, and Romania has begun to assume it,” wrote Oana.

She also mentioned how “some Romanian diplomats who opposed the decision to mark the passports of Jews [had] helped many people to be saved in time from extermination. Even in the darkest episodes of history, there were heroes,” adding that she had discussed this with Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, whom U.S. President Donald Trump appointed last year to serve as U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism.

Romania had some 800,000 Jews before the Holocaust. Today, the minority’s population is estimated as about 8,000.

But we are celebrating the wrong phrase.

The previous sentence in that letter contains one of the most sweeping and original assertions made by the Founders. Washington told the Newport congregation: “It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights.”

We tend to think of tolerance as an ideal. Washington said that this was a category error. Tolerance implies that one group holds rights by default and extends permission to another.

That model, familiar from every European society Jews ever inhabited, was incompatible with what America had built. Jewish rights in the new republic required no majority permission, because those rights were inherent. They were structural features of the republic itself, not gifts from the dominant culture.

Washington told the congregation that the equality of Jews and all peoples was built into the foundation of the nation, not an afterthought.

Where did that foundation come from?

The standard account of the American founding cites the likes of John Locke, Montesquieu and the traditions of English common law. As important as they were, the founders themselves often pointed to something older. They quoted the Hebrew Bible in their pamphlets and sermons more than any other text.

When Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were each asked, independently, to propose a seal for the new nation, both reached for the same image: the Israelites crossing the sea, liberated from bondage, moving toward a promised land governed by law rather than by blood.

Franklin and Jefferson had little else in common theologically, but they agreed on the model. It was 3,000 years old.

The Hebrew covenant at Sinai had done something unprecedented in the ancient world. It created a people through acceptance of shared obligation rather than shared ancestry alone. Membership in the covenant community was defined by what you accepted, not what you were born into.

This principle was so radical that Hebrew scripture marked it explicitly: Ruth, a Moabite woman with no Israelite blood, chose the covenant with the words, “Your people shall be my people,” and became the great-grandmother of Israel’s greatest king, David. The law preceded the nation; the covenant preceded the community.

America’s founders replicated that structure. The republic they built defined citizenship by acceptance of shared obligation—the Constitution, the rule of law, the civic commitments of self-government—and made those obligations open to anyone willing to take them on, regardless of origin. That is how Washington could write to the Jews of Newport with complete structural confidence. Their belonging required no indulgence, because the covenant model on which America was built had never recognized indulgence as a category.

The contrast with France makes Washington’s letter even more striking. The French Revolution emancipated Jews the following year, in 1791, but revolutionary assembly member Stanislas de Clermont-Tonnerre’s formula expressed the logic of French Emancipation: “Everything to Jews as individuals, nothing to Jews as a nation.”

That is, rights were extended to the Jews on the condition that Jews dissolve their collective identity and become Frenchmen first. Sixteen years later, Napoleon convened his assembly of Jewish notables, dubbed “the Sanhedrin,” demanding that French Jews answer a series of pointed questions, such as: Did Jewish law permit intermarriage with Christians? Did Jews consider Frenchmen their brothers? Could Jews serve in the military?

The entire exercise was a loyalty test. Jews had to demonstrate their fitness for citizenship before it could be confirmed. Napoleon later issued his “infamous decree” of 1808, imposing special commercial restrictions on Jews that applied to no other group in France, treating them as a suspect class requiring supervision.

In France, rights were extended by the state’s generosity and could be conditioned or withdrawn. As noted above, Washington said something structurally different: that Jewish rights required no majority’s permission, because they were inherent features of the republic itself.

The American record, of course, was imperfect. The covenantal promise of membership through accepted obligation coexisted for nearly a century with slavery, and full legal equality for black Americans was not secured until the 1960s. This was not a problem with the founding vision of America, but with its implementation.

Martin Luther King’s speeches were so effective because he articulated the difference between the America as designed by the Founding Fathers and the one he lived in. In his “I Have a Dream” speech, he framed the Declaration of Independence’s declaration that all men are created equal as a “promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.” A nation built on ethnic identity has no internal mechanism for ensuring true equality; a nation built on covenant can always be called back to its own principles.

Today, the American covenant is under serious pressure from two directions simultaneously.

The left has been replacing the covenant’s universal terms with group identity. The relevant question, in this framework, is not what you accept but what you are: your race, your gender and your position in a hierarchy of historical grievance. From the right, ethnonationalism defines the nation by ancestry and culture rather than by shared obligation. In both models, the covenant is conditional, depending on which group you belong to.

Both abandon America’s founding logic. Both make Jewish belonging in America contingent in ways that Washington explicitly said it never could be.

July 4 marks 250 years since the founders declared that the covenant model—the Hebraic concept of membership through accepted obligation—would be the organizing principle of American life. This anniversary deserves more than celebration. It deserves a rededication to understanding what was actually built and why it was worth building.

Washington’s letter to the Jews of Newport is not primarily a document about Jewish history. It is a document about the architecture of the American republic, a republic whose foundation, as the founders understood and the letter makes plain, bears the fingerprints of Sinai.

He was not a rabbi, communal leader or scholar. Nor did he come from one of the great centers of Jewish life in Europe or the Middle East. Born in 1820 in Hastings, England, Salmon would travel across the globe and settle in Tahiti.

Eventually, this English Jewish merchant married into Tahitian royalty, became a trusted adviser and secretary to the ruling dynasty and left an imprint on the island that is still remembered today.

His story constitutes a little-known chapter in Jewish history, linking the Jewish people to a distant corner of the South Pacific that most would never associate with Judaism.

When people think of Tahiti—the largest island in French Polynesia—they generally picture turquoise waters, lush mountains and white-sand beaches. Located more than 4,000 miles southwest of California, the island is synonymous with tropical paradise. But beneath the postcard imagery lies a fascinating historical connection to the Jewish people that stretches back nearly two centuries.

In the early 1800s, the island was undergoing a profound change. European traders, missionaries and adventurers were arriving in increasing numbers, bringing with them new ideas, new technologies and growing foreign influence. Tensions simmered between the Pōmare dynasty, which founded the Kingdom of Tahiti in 1788, local clans and rival European powers, particularly Britain and France.

Salmon arrived in Tahiti in 1841 and quickly established himself as a successful merchant and businessman. His intelligence, ambition and commercial skills made him prominent in Tahitian society.

His life took an extraordinary turn in January 1842 when he married Princess Ariʻitaʻimaʻi, a high-ranking chiefess of the Teva clan and a close relative of Queen Pōmare IV. Queen Pōmare IV reportedly suspended a Tahitian law prohibiting Polynesians from marrying foreigners for three days to allow the union to proceed.

The marriage placed Salmon at the center of Tahitian political and social life. He served as secretary to Queen Pōmare IV and became a trusted adviser during a pivotal period. He fathered several children, and after his daughter Titaua Salmon married Scottish merchant John Brander, the Salmon-Brander clan became one of the most influential in Tahiti for generations.

Another of Salmon’s daughters, Johanna Marau Taʻaroa Salmon, better known as Queen Marau, married King Pōmare V and became the last Queen of Tahiti. Their son, Alexander Salmon Jr., later played a significant role in the history of Easter Island, where he became a major landholder and local power broker.

In an era when Jews in many parts of the world faced discrimination and legal restrictions, Salmon found himself occupying a position of influence in a Pacific monarchy. Though largely secular in practice, his Jewish identity remained part of his background amid the islands’ complex cultural shifts.

At the same time, Tahiti was increasingly falling under French influence. France established a protectorate over the islands in 1843 and formally annexed them in 1880. The transition marked the end of the independent Tahitian monarchy and ushered in a new colonial era. Salmon witnessed much of this transformation firsthand until his death on Aug. 6, 1866, in Papeete, the capital of French Polynesia.

Although his Jewish background was only one aspect of his identity, Salmon’s story stands as a remarkable example of how Jews often found themselves participating in and helping shape events far from the traditional centers of Jewish life. Contemporary observers, including naval officers and the author Herman Melville, noted Salmon’s theatrical personality and outsized influence.

For many decades after Salmon’s era, however, there was little organized Jewish presence in Tahiti. The islands were simply too remote to attract large numbers of Jewish settlers. Unlike communities that emerged in the Caribbean, South America or Southeast Asia, Tahiti never developed a substantial Jewish population.

That began to change in the 20th century, particularly after the upheavals of decolonization in North Africa. In the 1960s, a small number of Sephardic Jews, primarily from Algeria, along with some from Morocco and Tunisia, settled in French Polynesia. Most were French citizens seeking new opportunities in overseas territories.

Though modest in number, these newcomers laid the foundation for a renewed Jewish presence. In 1982, members of the community established the Association Culturelle des Israélites et Sympathisants de Polynésie (ACISPO). Eleven years later, in 1993, they dedicated the Ahava V’Achva Synagogue, meaning “Love and Friendship,” in Papeete. The synagogue, nestled amid tropical flora such as palm, pomegranate, date and mango trees, includes a mikvah and social hall, with Torah scrolls donated from Paris and Los Angeles.

Its very existence is noteworthy. There are few places on earth more geographically isolated than Tahiti. The nearest major Jewish communities are thousands of miles away. Obtaining kosher food can be challenging. Rabbis visit only periodically. Jewish educational resources are limited. Yet the synagogue continues to function as a focal point for local Jewish life, serving a largely Sephardic community.

Today, the Jewish population of French Polynesia numbers fewer than 200. On ordinary Sabbaths, synagogue attendance may be modest. But during the High Holidays and major festivals, the community gathers in large numbers to pray together, celebrate their heritage and maintain a connection to Jewish tradition.

Few tourists today encounter the story of a Jewish merchant from England who became part of a Polynesian royal dynasty and the tiny Jewish community that continues to thrive thousands of miles from any major center of Jewish life.

In a place famous for its natural wonders, this story may be one of Tahiti’s most remarkable treasures of all.

For once, no one was giving orders. No one was running toward an alert. No one was scanning the horizon for the next threat. For a few hours, these members of the Israel Defense Forces—many of them reservists pulled away from families, businesses, classrooms and ordinary lives—were allowed to do something war rarely permits:

They stopped and reflected.

During a recent visit to Israel, I had the privilege, as executive director of ZOA-Michigan, of participating in and speaking at powerful programs for IDF soldiers struggling with the emotional wounds of war. Organized together with our Israeli partners, the goal was simple but urgent: to give soldiers carrying the burden of combat a place to breathe, connect and begin processing what they have endured.

The program combined hands-on activities, including working the land and planting trees, with shared meals, music and group discussions around a campfire. As the evening unfolded, soldiers gradually opened their hearts. Some spoke freely. Others said little. But even silence felt meaningful.

When the people sitting beside you understand what you have seen and experienced, silence does not feel empty. It feels shared.

The visible war is easy to recognize. It has uniforms, sirens, rockets, weapons and funerals. The quieter war is harder to see. It begins when a soldier comes home.

Throughout the program, we heard stories that were both heartbreaking and familiar. One soldier spoke about sitting at the Shabbat table with his fiancée but feeling emotionally miles away. Another described staring at a page in class and realizing that he had read the same paragraph 10 times without absorbing a word. A successful business owner shared how, after months of reserve duty, decisions that once came naturally now felt overwhelming.

Several soldiers described sleepless nights, recurring nightmares, anxiety and the feeling of being constantly on guard, even in places that should feel safe. A slammed door. A crowded room. A firecracker going off. Ordinary moments that most people barely notice can instantly trigger memories of the battlefield.

These are not signs of weakness. They are the very real symptoms of trauma.

And Israel is facing them on a staggering scale.

Israel’s Ministry of Defense has reported that more than 22,000 wounded soldiers have been treated since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, 2023. Of those, approximately 58% are coping with PTSD or other mental-health conditions. Roughly 63% are reservists—ordinary Israelis who stepped out of everyday life and into history.

Mental-health professionals and military officials have warned of a significant rise in psychological distress among soldiers since the war began, highlighting the urgent need for expanded treatment, rehabilitation and long-term support.

Behind every statistic is a person who answered when Israel called. A son. A daughter. A husband. A wife. A parent. A friend. Someone who stood guard so others could sleep. Someone who carried the weight of Jewish survival on young shoulders.

One of the most moving moments of the program came when the soldiers learned about the efforts of American Jewish communities to support Israel and combat antisemitism. Many expressed profound gratitude. They understood that Israel’s struggle is not fought only on the battlefield. It is also fought in the media, on college campuses, in our communities and in the halls of government.

They wanted us to know that our support matters.

True solidarity means standing with Israel’s soldiers not only when they march into battle, but also when they begin the long journey home. The war may end for many of them when they leave the battlefield. The healing often takes much longer.