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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Jew-hatred is harming America. We are not only worried about ourselves. We are worried about the country we love,” Hirsch said. “Unhinged and obsessive loathing of........

© The Times of Israel