At least two Jewish organizations have announced events next week with Israel’s Itamar Ben-Gvir when the far-right politician makes his first trip to the United States since becoming Israel’s national security minister.
When Ben-Gvir first joined Israel’s cabinet in 2022, the Biden administration considered banning him from the United States and American Jewish groups rose up in near-unison to condemn his extremist views and record. At various times he and his Jewish Power party have called for the expulsion of “disloyal” Palestinians, the annexation of the West Bank and intensification of the war in Gaza.
Major Jewish organizations said this week that they were unaware of Ben-Gvir’s visit or had no plans to meet with him. And far-right pro-Israel groups have backed away from their initial claims that they were brokering his visit.
But Shabtai, a Jewish society based at Yale University whose founders include Sen. Cory Booker, is hosting Ben-Gvir twice: once on Yale’s campus in New Haven, Connecticut, on the evening of April 23, and again the following afternoon on New York’s Upper East Side. (The engagements overlap with Yom Hashoah, the Jewish Holocaust memorial day.)
The first talk will be attended by Yale students and faculty, according to Shabtai. The second talk, the invitation says, will focus on “securing Israel post-October 7th.” Guests are expected to include “federal judges, bankers, Columbia/NYU professors, and NYC notables that care about Israel,” Shabtai’s director said.
Later that evening, a branch of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement is hosting Ben-Gvir for a Brooklyn fundraiser for Chabad of Hebron, in the West Bank. Bais Shmuel Chabad, in Crown Heights, is advertising a $36-a-head “open panel discussion” with Ben-Gvir to “gain behind-the-scenes insight into the fight for Jewish sovereignty over all the Land of Israel and the push for victory through strength at the highest levels of government.”
Prior to the event’s announcement, a spokesperson for Chabad told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the Orthodox movement, whose synagogues operate autonomously, was unaware of any meetings being planned with Ben-Gvir.
Rabbi Shmully Hecht, director of the Shabtai society at Yale University, speaks to members during an event, Jan. 25, 2024. (Screenshot)
Rabbi Shmully Hecht, a Shabtai co-founder and its current rabbinical advisor, told (JEWISH REVIEW) he was proud to host Ben-Gvir.
“Shabtai believes in free discourse and hosts speakers with a variety of views on American politics, business, ethics, religion, literature, the arts and more. We promote Judaism and free speech. It’s Talmudic,” he wrote in an email.
Hecht, who also founded Yale’s Chabad center, is not shy about his support of the minister. “I admire Ben-Gvir,” he wrote, comparing him favorably to Booker and another Democratic senator, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who is Jewish. “Itamar promotes what he believes is best for his people that democratically elected him.”
He also had positive words for Rabbi Meir Kahane, the Jewish extremist whom Ben-Gvir admires. “Ben-Gvir, like Meir Kahane, warned Israelis, the Jewish people, and the West of the dangers of Radical Islam and the Jihadists,” Hecht said. “Sadly they have been rejected by naïve liberals who delusionally presume Westerners can make peace with the likes of ISIS, Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iranian Mullahs. Oct 7th must be the last war of Israel. Only bold, resolute leaders like Ben Gvir can assure same.”
While the Biden administration blackballed Ben-Gvir and sanctioned violent settler groups that advance his vision of increased Jewish settlement in the West Bank, Trump has lifted those sanctions and echoed some of the minister’s calls to depopulate Gaza — possibly clearing the way for a warmer reception for his trip. One of his traveling companions, according to Haaretz, will be Akiva Hacohen, an American-born settler convicted in 2013 of spying on the Israeli military to protect illegal settlements.
For Ben-Gvir’s many critics, the events — as well as an additional schedule of engagements that Ben-Gvir’s office has promised Israeli media — signal the degree to which the politician’s views are being normalized.
“Mobilizing against Ben-Gvir is mobilizing against extremism,” said Offir Gutelzon, a leader of UnXeptable, the protest movement of Israelis in the United States. The group is organizing an anti-Ben-Gvir rally in the Upper East Side on Thursday, around the same time as the Shabtai event.
A letter circulated by the group states, “As Israelis in America and as American Jews, we believe this visit requires a clear, clarion call: Itamar Ben-Gvir is not welcome in our community.
“He is not welcome in our country. He does not represent us as Jews or as Israelis. We steadfastly oppose his dark vision for Judaism, Israel and for the Middle East.”
The letter is co-signed by several progressive Jewish groups and individuals, including the Union for Reform Judaism; the New York Jewish Agenda; We Are All Hostages, which advocates for Israeli hostage families; J Street; and several individual hostage family members.
Chabad Headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Jan. 9, 2024. (Luke Tress)
Ben-Gvir’s office told Israeli media his U.S. visit would encompass stops in Miami, New York and Washington, D.C. At one point he was reportedly expected to meet with his counterpart in the Trump administration, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, but that meeting is no longer happening, according to a report in Haaretz. A Homeland Security spokesperson did not return a (JEWISH REVIEW) request for comment.
Not many other details about Ben-Gvir’s planned visit have been made public, but most major American Jewish groups contacted by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency said they had no plans to meet with him. Some hadn’t been aware he was making the trip.
Representatives for the Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee, Jewish Federations of North America and umbrella group Conference of Presidents all told (JEWISH REVIEW) they were not meeting with Ben-Gvir, with the latter three emphasizing that no meeting request had been made.
Two years ago, the heads of some of those groups met in secret with Ben-Gvir ally Bezalel Smotrich during the Israeli finance minister’s visit to the United States. Their meeting, when publicized months later, prompted blowback from liberal and centrist Jewish groups. (Smotrich himself made a brief return visit last month to meet with Trump’s Treasury secretary.)
The visits that are confirmed are with groups with a record of engaging people with extreme views.
Founded in the 1990s by several figures including Booker, then a Yale Law student, Shabtai (which at various points was named the Chai Society and Eliezer) styles itself as an intellectual salon and hosts various Jewish speakers for on- and off-campus events. Past events have featured right-wing Israeli politician Simcha Rothman; Israeli Supreme Court justices; former Trump administration official Anthony Scaramucci; anti-Zionist Jewish blogger Philip Weiss; and Booker himself, in 2022. The group made headlines during the 2024 Republican presidential primary, when former member Vivek Ramaswamy, who is not Jewish, ran for president with a platform of limiting aid to Israel.
Hecht, Shabtai’s director, worked directly with Booker in Shabtai’s early days. Booker did not immediately return a request for comment made to his office about the Ben-Gvir event. The senator has issued harsh words about Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his governing coalition that includes Ben-Gvir, calling it “ultra-right-wing.”
Also participating in the Chabad Ben-Gvir event are Israeli podcaster and advocate for Jewish emigration Yishai Fleisher and Rabbi Danny Cohen, leader of Chabad of Hebron.
Chabad has found close purchase with the political right in the United States and Israel. Trump’s border czar Tom Homan even attended a dinner at a yeshiva last month, and last week Trump announced that a Chabad businessman, Yehuda Kaploun, would be his pick for antisemitism envoy. Linda McMahon, the education secretary, swung by a Chabad school on one of her first school visits, and Trump himself has visited the Ohel, the gravesite of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the movement’s last leader known as the Rebbe.
But some within Chabad say the embrace of Ben-Gvir in Crown Heights is a bridge too far.
“I was very disappointed in this community specifically,” Tzofiah Frieden, a liberal-leaning Chabad artist and social media influencer in Crown Heights, told (JEWISH REVIEW) about her reaction to the Ben-Gvir event. Citing Schneerson’s opposition to taking political stances, Frieden said she believed hosting Ben-Gvir was “against the values of what we should be promoting as Chabad.”
But she acknowledged that the Crown Heights community has shifted rightward in recent years, and she said she doubted that many in Crown Heights, who generally support a one-state solution that privileges a Jews majority, would understand the political significance of hosting Ben-Gvir.
“A lot of the very frum people who live in Crown Heights are not super politically aware,” she said. “From what they’re aware of, he wants a united Israel, he wants a one-state solution. And I don’t know that they would be aware of the history of Kahanism.”
Meanwhile, Betar US, which frequently antagonizes both pro-Palestinians and other Jews on the street and online, tweeted and later deleted that they “will warmly welcome a leader of the Israeli government Itamar Ben Gvir on his first trip to the US next week,” and that they would “host events warmly in DC, NY and Miami.”
Betar — which in recent days has called for a “mass Jewish exodus” to Israel, while also pressuring Israel’s Knesset to ban certain progressive Jews from entering the country — immediately drew blowback from Democratic pro-Israel Rep. Ritchie Torres, who has recently floated running for governor of New York. Torres shot down the group’s suggestion that he meet with Ben-Gvir.
“There is no universe in which I would ever grant an audience to an extremist like Ben Gvir or any organization like yours that embraces his extremism,” Torres, who has in the past called the minister a “despicable disgusting dangerous demagogue,” tweeted at Betar. “If you had done your homework, you would [have] known that I have nothing but contempt for [Ben-]Gvir.”
Betar initially claimed to be co-sponsoring his visit with the Zionist Organization of America, with whom the group has allied in the World Zionist Congress. But ZOA head Mort Klein told (JEWISH REVIEW) he “did not give permission to host Ben-Gvir,” without elaborating on his own views of the minister.
Shortly afterward, Betar deleted the tweet and walked back their hosting proposal following questioning from (JEWISH REVIEW). Reached again on Thursday, the group did not say it would host its own event with Ben-Gvir.
“Betar US supports all israeli government ministers at this time as they travel,” a spokesperson said. “We are pleased the mainstream Zionist and Jewish community will welcome the minister to America during his visit.”
Correction: This story originally mistakenly named as a cofounder of Shabtai Society someone who was not involved. The name has been removed.
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