If you go to synagogue — and if you pay attention to the rabbi’s sermon — do you expect them to talk about the Gaza war? Perhaps the latest news from the White House?
According to a recent study, you should.
Researchers at the Jewish People Policy Institute, based in Israel, used AI to analyze 4,400 sermons, sourced from 34 Reform, Conservative and Modern Orthodox synagogues and rabbis and mostly dating from October 2021 to October 2024. The survey found, more than anything else, that sermons across denominations tended to focus on politics and Israel — especially after Oct. 7, 2023.
Before the Hamas attack that began the Gaza war, the study found that about half of sermons across denominations focused on politics. But after Oct. 7, when it felt as if every Jewish institution and event was singularly focused on the crisis in Israel, so were sermons: More than two-thirds of the sermons analyzed in that period were about the situation in Israel — including 80% of Modern Orthodox sermons.
And most of those sermons, in turn, began with political themes.
“It’s not only about the fact that there is politics in the sermons. Politics gets a very central place,” said Ghila Amati, the survey’s lead author. “Almost every sermon was about politics after Oct. 7. Another finding was about — not only was it about politics, it was about Israel.”
Politics and Israel
Amati acknowledged that for regular American synagogue attendees, of course, the notion that politics and Israel are central topics of discourse — from the pulpit and at the kiddush buffet alike — isn’t exactly a surprise.
But for the researchers in Israel, where synagogues don’t double as community centers the way they do stateside, the data demonstrated strong connections to Israel across American Jewish institutional life — confounding expectations both about synagogues and about the perception of Israel among American Jews.
“This tells us something about the connection of the affiliated communities in the states with Israel,” she said. “You would expect that maybe the Reform would talk less about Israel, would be less connected to Israel, but you see here that everyone is talking about Israel all the time. There is a strong desire to be in a conversation [about] what is happening in Israel.”
The study does not cover the breadth of American Jewish worship. Its genesis was in the pandemic, when synagogues that held services over Zoom would record and post their rabbis’ sermons. The researchers took thousands of those sermons, transcribed them, and then used ChatGPT to analyze them. In addition, they reached out to a number of Modern Orthodox synagogues, which do not use electricity on Shabbat, to obtain copies of their sermons, ultimately obtaining them from 11 rabbis.
Gaps in the research
The method left gaps. For one, haredi Orthodox synagogues, which draw many of the most frequent synagogue-goers in the country, are not represented at all. Neither are Reconstructionist congregations. The researchers also did not distinguish between ideological factions within the movements — for example, liberal Modern Orthodox vs. the more traditionalist Young Israel movement. Conservative synagogues that decided not to record their sermons on Shabbat because of Jewish legal prohibitions are likewise not reflected. The rabbis who gave the sermons are not listed.
There are some broad takeaways, though. Sermons that spoke about Israel did so in overwhelmingly positive terms, especially after Oct. 7.
Criticism of Israel did spike, especially in Reform sermons, during the year or so when Israel’s current government was in office prior to Oct. 7, as the government was pursuing a program of weakening the judiciary. During that period, more than 40% of Reform sermons included some criticism of Israeli politics.
After Oct. 7, the single most frequent Israel-related issue mentioned in sermons was Israel’s hostage crisis. It featured in more than one in 10 sermons, and nearly one in five at Conservative synagogues.
Reform synagogues were also the most likely to discuss other topics in the news after Oct. 7, such as humanitarian aid or civilian casualties in Gaza. The idea of moving to Israel, by contrast, was barely a theme of any sermons across denominations.
“Reform sermons reflect the most extensive engagement with ethical, humanitarian, and legal concerns, incorporating a more diverse range of political discussions,” the survey text says. “Conservative sermons, though still hostage-focused, offer limited engagement with humanitarian issues. Orthodox sermons remain almost exclusively centered on the hostage situation, largely avoiding broader political or humanitarian debates.”
The researchers analyzed the sermons by giving ChatGPT a series of prompts and then feeding the text of the sermons into them. It provided examples of criticism or praise of Israeli policies, albeit using language that does not purport to connect discussion of the war to religious or ritual themes.
The example of defense of Israel, for example, was, “There are those who accuse Israel of genocide or the intentional harming of civilians. These are false accusations. Israel is protecting itself against a brutal Hamas terror campaign.”
The researchers would review a selection of sermons to make sure ChatGPT wasn’t making mistakes. That led them to one mistake the AI was making: Initially, it found that the vast majority of sermons began with religious themes. The team soon figured out why.
“What we found out is that that is not the case,” Amati said. “The chat thought that every time the rabbi said ‘Shabbat shalom’ at the beginning of the sermon, it is religious content. So we had to adjust that.”
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