02/05/2026 –, (3OG) Bibliothek Idioma: English
In 2023, Argentina elected a president who quotes Torah in speeches, holds study sessions with his personal rabbi — now appointed as Argentina's ambassador to Israel — visits the tomb of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, wears a kippah at public events, and publicly declares his intention to convert to Judaism. This session does not ask whether Javier Milei's connection to Jewish tradition is sincere — it argues that sincerity is beside the point. What matters is how Jewish symbols, messianic narratives, and sacred texts are being instrumentalized to legitimize a specific political project, and what that means for Jewish communities, democratic institutions, and the public image of Judaism itself.
Drawing on the collective volume Las fuerzas del cielo: Argentina, Milei y los judíos (2024) and the presenter's own chapter in it, this lecture examines the dangers of messianic political grammar, the distortion of Jewish textual tradition in the service of far-right libertarianism, and a global pattern in which the far right increasingly claims Jewish and Israeli symbols — regardless of its historical relationship with antisemitism. The session includes original Spanish-language sources with translation and commentary, and closes with open discussion.
Javier Milei — Argentina's current president and self-described anarcho-capitalist — has built one of the most visible public relationships with Judaism of any non-Jewish head of state in recent history. He has a personal rabbi with whom he has been studying for years, now appointed as Argentina's ambassador to Israel. He quotes Hebrew scripture in political speeches, visits the tomb of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, wears a kippah at public events, and sings Hava Nagila. Most strikingly, he explicitly identifies himself as Moses — the reluctant prophet chosen to lead his people out of economic slavery — while simultaneously calling his political opponents "cockroaches," a slur with a specific and chilling resonance in the history of genocidal dehumanization.
This lecture draws on Las fuerzas del cielo: Argentina, Milei y los judíos (Milena Caserola, 2024), a collective volume coordinated by historian Raanan Rein and journalist Pablo Méndez Shiff, featuring over twenty Argentine Jewish intellectuals. The presenter contributed a chapter analyzing the phenomenon as an Argentine Jew, a political scientist, and someone currently completing rabbinical training — examining how Milei's apparent devotion to Judaism does not neutralize, but rather intensifies, the risks of instrumentalizing a tradition for political ends.
The session explores three threads: how sincerity and instrumentalization are not mutually exclusive; how Milei's messianic self-image, far from reflecting Jewish tradition, contradicts a rabbinic culture that — from the Oven of Akhnai to its long reckoning with false messiahs — built its deepest commitments around resisting exactly this kind of authority, captured in the Talmud's own words: "it is not in the heavens"; and how this case illuminates a global pattern of far-right movements appropriating Jewish and Israeli symbols while eroding the democratic institutions that protect minorities.
The session closes with 15–20 minutes of open discussion.
Uriel Aiskovich is a Jewish educator, community organizer, and social innovator based in Berlin. He is a PhD candidate at the University of Potsdam, researching the use of video games for Jewish education and critical thinking. Uriel holds an MA in Jewish Theology and a BA in Political Science, and is completing his rabbinical training at Abraham Geiger College. He taught Political Science and Philosophy of Social Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires and directed the Centro Hebreo Iona for 15 years.
He currently coordinates Jewish Learning at the Fraenkelufer Synagogue and serves as Project Manager of JASS – the Jewish Activism Summer School. Uriel also founded several initiatives on education, identity, and democracy, including ID: Identity and Diversity Talks, and is the co-author of Puño y Letra: Caligrafía y Poder (2021)