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Michigan senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed campaigns for at the Michigan Democratic Nominating Convention in April. Photo by im West\/UCG\/Universal Images Group via Getty Images<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tBy Hannah Feuer<\/a><\/p>\n June 12, 2026<\/p>\n Michigan senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed isn\u2019t toning down his rhetoric to win over Jewish voters.<\/p>\n He\u2019s called Israel\u2019s action in Gaza a genocide, wants to withdraw both offensive and defensive military aid to Israel, called the Israeli government \u201cevil\u201d like Hamas<\/a>, has rebuffed questions about whether Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state, and in an interview with the Forward, doubled down on his decision to campaign with controversial Twitch streamer Hasan Piker and his response<\/a> to the attack on a Michigan syangogue in March: \u201cHurt people hurt people.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet at a progressive synagogue and events hosted by Michigan\u2019s Jewish Democratic caucus, El-Sayed, who is Muslim, is finding Jewish voters willing to hear him out \u2014 and a constituency of Jews who support his candidacy even when they disagree with him on Israel.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a playbook New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani employed to deflect allegations of antisemitism<\/a>: Don\u2019t soften on Israel or what rhetoric crosses a line, but speak with the Jewish press, meet with Jewish organizations and demonstrate a cultural fluency with Judaism beyond the politics of the Middle East.<\/p>\n The race, which could determine which party controls the Senate, is also a test of Israel politics in a swing state home to the nation\u2019s highest concentration of Arab Americans.<\/p>\n The three leading candidates occupy distinct positions on the issue: El-Sayed has made criticism of Israel and AIPAC a central plank of his campaign. On the other end of the spectrum, Rep. Haley Stevens describes herself as \u201cproud pro-Israel Democrat\u201d and is backed by AIPAC. And in the middle, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow has won the endorsement of J Street, the liberal Zionist advocacy group that supports a two-state solution.<\/p>\n El-Sayed, who currently leads in the polls, maintains his candor has helped him build a Jewish coalition of his own.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s going to be things that they disagree with, but at least they know I have the courage to say where I stand,\u201d El-Sayed told the Forward. \u201cI say it everywhere to everyone, and my positions are based in principle, not just political calculus.\u201d<\/p>\n Jews for Abdul<\/p>\n While a number of Jewish organizations have expressed alarm at El-Sayed\u2019s campaign, one synagogue welcomed him inside.<\/p>\n Congregation T\u2019chiyah, a Reconstructionist synagogue outside Detroit that describes itself as progressive, hosted El-Sayed<\/a> for a Passover Seder in April. Many of its congregants support El-Sayed\u2019s campaign and are volunteering with a group dubbed \u201cJews for Abdul<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n One of those volunteers is Lex Eisenberg, a T\u2019chiyah congregant who also organizes with the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace.<\/p>\n \u201cAs progressive Jews, we\u2019re all too familiar with the way that people who speak out for Palestinian freedom are smeared and attacked the way some are smearing Abdul right now,\u201d Eisenberg said. \u201cSo the idea is that we want to be outwardly and publicly Jewish and supporting Abdul.\u201d<\/p>\n El-Sayed\u2019s campaign has also attracted some prominent progressive Jewish voices. Former Michigan congressman Andy Levin \u2014 who previously served as president of Congregation T\u2019chiyah \u2014 endorsed El-Sayed alongside Bernie Sanders, the progressive Jewish senator from Vermont. (El-Sayed has called Sanders his \u201cfavorite Jewish uncle<\/a>.\u201d)<\/p>\n Levin, who identifies as Zionist, sees echoes of his own political battles in El-Sayed\u2019s campaign. He lost his House election against Stevens in 2022 after AIPAC poured millions<\/a> into defeating him, displeased with his support for a bill that backed a two-state solution and restricted use of U.S. taxpayer funds to expand settlements in the occupied West Bank.<\/p>\n \u201cSo many young Jewish people are active in Abdul\u2019s campaign,\u201d Levin told the Forward. \u201cAnd it\u2019s their Judaism that leads them to that position, because their Judaism teaches them that the way to fight antisemitism isn\u2019t to circle the wagons and shut off the world, but to build alliances with other oppressed people.\u201d<\/p>\n Welcoming leftist politicians is not unusual for Congregation T\u2019chiyah: Its rabbi, Alana Alpert, was the founding director of the progressive political advocacy group Detroit Jews for Justice, and she has been honored by Rashida Tlaib<\/a>, the Palestinian-American Michigan congresswoman censured by the House over her comments about Israel. (Alpert did not respond to the Forward\u2019s request for an interview.)<\/p>\n \u201cT\u2019chiyah, of course, is a congregation that is focused on uplifting social justice around the idea of tikkun olam,\u201d El-Sayed said.<\/p>\n Yet El-Sayed\u2019s coalition also extends to those with complicated relationships to the Jewish state.<\/p>\n Roslyn Abt Schindler, a retired professor who taught Holocaust studies at Wayne State University, has been a member of Congregation T\u2019chiyah for 48 of the synagogue\u2019s 49 years. The daughter of Holocaust survivors, Schindler plans to vote for El-Sayed and agrees with his characterization of Israel\u2019s actions in Gaza as genocide.<\/p>\n But she also supports a two-state solution \u2014 a position El-Sayed has not endorsed, and one she wishes he would.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\tRosyln Abt Schindler and Abdul El-Sayed \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\tEl-Sayed speaks with a Congregation T\u2019chiyah member. Schindler said the issues that matter most to her are affordability, campaign finance reform, environmental protection and Medicare for All. El-Sayed\u2019s visit to her synagogue and Levin\u2019s endorsement of him, she said, sealed the deal.<\/p>\n \u201cHis outreach to Jewish voters has been genuine and thoughtful,\u201d Schindler said.<\/p>\n Decky Alexander, chair of the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus \u2014 which endorsed Stevens last week \u2014 agreed that El-Sayed has engaged Michigan\u2019s Jewish community. He participated in a candidate forum co-hosted by the Jewish caucus, and he attended the organization\u2019s \u201cSummer Simcha,\u201d the caucus\u2019 annual fundraiser that draws Jewish leaders from across the political spectrum.<\/p>\n Alexander said she doesn\u2019t personally support El-Sayed, but she believes the Jewish caucus could work with him and trusts that he takes antisemitism seriously. After the recent attack on Temple Israel, El-Sayed was the first politician to text her with a message of support.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s present and showing up,\u201d Alexander said. \u201cAnd not just showing up to really left-leaning communities that are Jewish, but across the board.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Hurt people hurt people\u2019<\/p>\n Other Jews say that outreach has done little to quell concerns about El-Sayed.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen a public figure is struggling to affirm Israel\u2019s right to exist, many Jews are going to see that as a challenge to Jewish self-determination, not simply a policy disagreement,\u201d said Amy Sapeika, community director of American Jewish Committee Detroit.<\/p>\n The other candidates, meanwhile, have for the most part only hinted at their differences with El-Sayed when it comes to Israel and antisemitism \u2014\u00a0a polite tenor Alexander partly chalked up to a culture of \u201cMidwest nice.\u201d<\/p>\n Stevens, seen as the Democratic establishment pick, has touted her record of speaking up against antisemitism \u201cin all its forms\u201d and described herself as a lawmaker who is \u201cleading on combating antisemitism in a bipartisan way.\u201d<\/p>\n McMorrow has walked a middle ground, saying that Israel\u2019s military offensive in Gaza meets the critera for genocide<\/a> while also dismissing definitional debates as semantic. She has also said the Democratic Party has an antisemitism problem<\/a>, citing an antisemitic slur yelled at her Jewish husband during this year\u2019s Democratic Party convention in Detroit.<\/p>\n The National Jewish Democratic Council of America issued a rare dual endorsement of Stevens and McMorrow \u2014 explicitly drawing contrast with El-Sayed.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are two candidates who stand with our community on issues of importance to Jewish voters, and there is one who does not,\u201d CEO Halie Soifer said in a statement.<\/p>\n Those tensions came to a head after a man rammed a truck into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield in March with the stated intent of killing as many people as possible. El-Sayed issued a four-minute video<\/a> condemning the attack, while also noting that the perpetrator had four family members killed in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon, including two children.<\/p>\n \u201cHurt people hurt people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The response drew a public rebuke from Temple Israel\u2019s Rabbi Jen Lader, who wrote in a Free Press op-ed<\/a> that El-Sayed was \u201csuggesting that violence against a synagogue in suburban Detroit could be understood through the lens of Israeli actions,\u201d which she deemed \u201coffensive.\u201d<\/p>\n El-Sayed rejected the premise that linking the two events amounted to excusing violence.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s unserious when you want to decontextualize violence, and then say you want to stand against violence,\u201d he told the Forward. \u201cI will never be the kind of policymaker who doesn\u2019t want to understand why things happened if I\u2019m serious about stopping them from happening.\u201d<\/p>\n About a month after that attack, El-Sayed hosted a campaign event with Hasan Piker<\/a> \u2014 a Twitch streamer often called the \u201cJoe Rogan of the left\u201d who has likened liberal Zionists to \u201cliberal Nazis,\u201d said he doesn\u2019t have an issue with Hezbollah, and also said that \u201cHamas is 1,000 times better\u201d than Israel, among a slew of other controversial statements.<\/p>\n The event drew condemnation from Michigan State Hillel<\/a> and the Anti-Defamation League<\/a>, which called the decision to campaign with Piker \u201cabsolutely shocking.\u201d<\/p>\n It also drew the most direct rebukes to date from both opposing campaigns. Stevens told Jewish Inside<\/a>r Piker is \u201cthe exact opposite of someone I\u2019d be campaigning with,\u201d and McMorrow critiqued El-Sayed for hosting the event \u201cat a moment when there is clearly a lot of pain and trauma across our state.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow do you bring everybody together, especially when there are difficult conversations, where there aren\u2019t easy answers? You don\u2019t fan the flames and stoke division just to get attention,\u201d McMorrow said.<\/p>\n El-Sayed told the Forward that he would not defend Piker\u2019s most extreme remarks but argued that politicians should engage with a broad range of people, adding that he wanted to \u201creach out to the 3 million people who follow him, many of whom feel locked out of our politics.\u201d<\/p>\n More broadly, El-Sayed argues that his critics conflate the Israeli government with the Jewish people. He often points to his experience as a Muslim in helping him understand the experience of a religious minority, framing antisemitism and Islamophobia as related threats.<\/p>\n \u201cI know intimately what it\u2019s like to be discriminated against for how I pray, and I don\u2019t want anybody to experience that, be it because they are Jewish or because they are Muslim, or because they don\u2019t pray at all,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n It\u2019s difficult to gauge how El-Sayed\u2019s messaging is landing with Jewish voters; unlike in New York City, Michigan races do not have polling by religious affiliation. In any case, he may not need Jews\u2019 support to take office: Jewish voters make up just 1.4%<\/a> percent of the electorate in the state.<\/p>\n Still, El-Sayed said he is looking to connect.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m open to engage with any and all communities,\u201d El-Sayed said. \u201cAs I\u2019ve always said, if you invite me, I\u2019m going to come.\u201d<\/p>\n Hello, fellow Forward reader! I\u2019m Joel Brown, a Forward reader and supporter for more than 15 years, and currently the chair of the board of directors.<\/p>\n I\u2019m an avid Forward reader because it ticks so many of my essential boxes: excellent journalism, Jewish focus and diverse viewpoints. In today\u2019s political climate, what I most appreciate is the Forward\u2019s independence \u2014 made possible by the generosity of its membership.<\/p>\n The Forward is committed to bringing you unbiased, nuanced Jewish news. From my position as board chair, I see an exciting future as we expand our position as the definitive independent voice of contemporary American Judaism.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why I\u2019m paying it Forward, by matching $36,000 of reader gifts. It\u2019s an investment in the Forward\u2019s newsroom, to continue telling the American Jewish story with truth and independence.<\/p>\n Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/GettyImages-2273871911-1024x683.jpg\")
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Abdul El-Sayed at a Detroit stop on Sanders\u2019 \u201cFighting Oligarchy\u201d tour in May. Photo by Sarah Rice\/Getty Images<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/IMG_4450-768x1024.jpg\")
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Courtesy of Rosyln Abt Schindler<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/HFFhb5dWQAAc_wk-768x1024.jpeg\")
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Screenshot of @AbdulElSayed<\/a>
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El-Sayed on Hasan Piker\u2019s stream. Screenshot of YouTube<\/a><\/p>\n
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