Weeks ahead of back-to-back critical elections – Israeli national polls and U.S. midterm contests – former U.S. President Donald Trump welcomed a delegation of Haredi Jewish leaders, several of whom hold well-documented anti-Zionist views, to the White House this Thursday, in a pre-Rosh Hashanah gathering that broke from the standard format of typical presidential holiday receptions for religious groups.
The group of rabbis and community representatives, who traveled to Washington D.C. from the New York and New Jersey region, secured a rare one-on-one meeting with Trump at the Oval Office’s Resolute Desk, where they sat directly across from the former president. Trump’s Jewish son-in-law and former senior advisor Jared Kushner was also present for the discussion. Following the Oval Office audience, the delegation also held talks with Vice President JD Vance and U.S. Congressman Mike Lawler, a New York Republican facing a competitive re-election battle this November in the heavily Democratic-leaning 17th Congressional District.
Yossi Gestetner, a New York-based political activist and outspoken pro-Israel voice who participated in the meeting, shared the news on social media platform X, writing: “I had the great honor and privilege to introduce 6 Leading Rabbis of the Hasidic Community in the US to @JDVance. I told the @VP that in this room there are the leaders of the most visibly Jewish people in the US, and despite the noise on social media and disagreements, he should know that his role is respected and appreciated by all those in the room.”
Among the six rabbis in attendance was Aaron Teitelbaum, the Satmar Rebbe and a leading figure in global Orthodox anti-Zionist circles. Teitelbaum leads the ultraconservative Satmar community based in Kiryas Joel, New York – a village that falls within Lawler’s congressional district – and oversees a movement with roughly 100,000 adherents worldwide. Photographs from the meeting show Teitelbaum seated directly across from Trump, reading from a pre-prepared letter during the audience.
Miko Peled, an Israel-American author and activist familiar with the Satmar movement, told Middle East Eye that Teitelbaum was the most influential religious leader in the visiting delegation. Other anti-Zionist Haredi leaders note that the Satmar community takes a more cautious, nuanced approach to public anti-Zionist advocacy than smaller factions such as Neturei Karta International. “We know that officially it would be politically incorrect for them to meet with people who state unambiguously that [they] call for the entire dismantlement of the Zionist state of Israel,” explained Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, a prominent Neturei Karta activist who frequently organizes protests against Israeli government policy in New York.
The unprecedented gathering has drawn mixed reactions from across the political spectrum. Critics of current Israeli policy on social media have praised the meeting, pointing to growing questioning of the longstanding bipartisan U.S. commitment to unrestricted support for Israel among American conservative circles as a sign of potential shifting political alliances.
According to Peled, the Haredi delegation came to the meeting with two core goals. First, they sought to publicly reaffirm their anti-Zionist positions and clarify that they do not identify as Zionists. Second, they aimed to raise awareness of growing tensions between their global community and the current Israeli government, which has escalated pressure on Haredi communities over longstanding military conscription exemptions. Haredi Jews in Israel have held widespread protests against forced conscription for decades, and demonstrations have frequently been met with violent crackdowns by Israeli police.
The exemption for Haredi seminary students originated as a limited, temporary exception when Israel first gained statehood, but has expanded into a mass, ongoing dispute as the Haredi population has grown rapidly. Data shows Haredi Israelis made up roughly 10% of the national population in 2009, and that share has climbed to approximately 14% as of 2025. While some Haredi factions agree to work with secular Israeli political coalitions to protect their community autonomy, others remain firmly anti-Zionist, rejecting the legitimacy of the Israeli state entirely.
A senior White House official confirmed in an email to Middle East Eye that the meeting marked the first gathering of this specific group of Haredi rabbis at the White House since 1979, though some Hasidic leaders have met with former presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton at the executive residence in the years since, leaving it unclear whether the 1979 benchmark refers specifically to anti-Zionist Haredi sects. The official added that the delegation “thanked the President for all he had done in combatting anti-Semitism, advocating for school choice with the Middle-Class Tax Credit, and for fighting for peoples of faith.”
The official noted that the White House Faith Office regularly hosts religious leaders from across the United States to meet with the president, and that the administration has previously welcomed a range of Jewish representatives including Gaza hostage families, Holocaust survivors, and rabbis from multiple Jewish denominations.
Peled characterized the meeting as a historic, significant moment, noting that Trump adjusted his own schedule to accommodate delays in the delegation’s private jet travel to Washington, a sign of how important the gathering was to the former president. Political analysts point out that the choice to host the delegation carries clear electoral logic: Kiryas Joel, the heart of the Satmar community in the U.S., falls directly within the congressional district represented by Lawler, a pro-Trump incumbent locked in a tight re-election race.
Democratic critics have framed the meeting as a nakedly partisan political play. Halie Soifer, a former policy advisor to President Barack Obama and Vice President Kamala Harris who now leads the Jewish Democratic Council of America, argued that the gathering served a narrow partisan goal for the Trump administration and the Republican Party.
“The selection of just a group of Hasidic men is on brand for Donald Trump,” Soifer told Middle East Eye. “He brought in a very small non-representative sample of Jewish leaders to the White House, and was sure to include a vulnerable Republican incumbent who is likely to lose his seat in November.”
Soifer emphasized that the American Jewish community is not a monolith, noting that pre-holiday gatherings hosted by the Biden administration routinely included a broad cross-section of Jewish leadership, spanning all major denominations and political perspectives, rather than a narrow, non-representative fringe group.









