It was the summer of 2000. I had recently completed my first year of classes as a law student at UC Berkeley after living in Jerusalem the year prior. While in Israel, I volunteered for an organization that organized conferences promoting tolerance and co-existence amongst Israelis and Palestinians. Now, in the summer of 2000, I wed my college sweetheart, Miriam, and began preparations for our life as a married couple.
In the debate of whether to live in Berkeley (the vicinity of my law school) or Palo Alto (where Miriam was pursuing both her masters and PhD at Stanford), I felt strongly that we should live in the East Bay, believing the traditional Jewish community to be larger, more robust and diverse.Never mind that at Sproul Plaza — the historic area where Mario Savio galvanized students to support racial equality and folk singer Joan Baez gave some of her earliest performances — I witnessed antisemitic rallies advocating for the eradication of the Jewish State while waving pro-Jihadist flags in the air. And never mind that Miriam would have to contend with commuting 80+ miles roundtrip to Silicon Valley traveling from our home in Berkeley to Stanford and back. Much of my enthusiasm for Berkeley living was informed by my admiration for some of the “older” young couples, especially Rachel Goldberg and Jon Polin.
Then, as now, Rachel was exceedingly down-to-earth, sweet, welcoming, and kind.Her warmth and openness regularly brought people of all types into her orbit.
In fact, I had first met Rachel years earlier when studying in Jerusalem’s Old City after completing High School. Rachel was the popular, pretty waitress at a bustling Jerusalem restaurant and, for whatever reason, decided to adopt me and bring me into her world.With her, I attended Shabbat meals, meeting other Americans living in the Holy Land — Israeli Supreme Court clerks, teachers, volunteers, scholars and recent “olim.” Conversations often revolved around politics, adapting to life in Israel, and the weekly Torah portion. Rachel has a gravitational pull that, as the entire world now knows, is powerful without being overpowering.
Jon is an obvious complement to Rachel. Equally warm, centered, and effortlessly cool. He and Rachel share a similar Midwestern, Chicago affect. And, at the time, Jon was a fast-rising employee at Clorox with designs to become the independent business-owner and entrepreneur that he ultimately became. I admired them a lot and hoped that Miriam and I would have a marriage as strong and easy as theirs.
With the onset of the coming academic year, we had more pressing concerns than the long-term fate of our blessed marriage; namely, we needed to find a place to live. And fast. So there Miriam and I found ourselves at the entranceway to Jon and Rachel’s home.It contained a small yard and garden located past a long driveway behind a much larger home inhabited by a Holocaust-surviving French landlord named Anouchka. Rachel and Jon were preparing to move to a larger place because Rachel, as evidenced by the bump in her belly, was pregnant.
Miriam and I both recall Rachel telling us how the house was perfect for evading an intruder because one could run in circles and never be trapped in a room.
Jon and Rachel moved to their new place and we moved in to the little brown-shingled one-bedroom home that we named both the “Love Shack” and the “Shack in the Back.”Soon thereafter, we celebrated with Rachel and Jon and attended the bris of their newborn son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin.
We had not seen much of Jon and Rachel after leaving Berkeley. Facebook maintained a sense of intimacy and connection the way social media can and we found ourselves spending time together at a Passover program about a decade ago. Yet the overwhelming sorrow and dread we felt when we learned that Hersh was kidnapped is a terror I hope to never experience again and which makes the Goldberg-Polins’ horror almost unfathomable.
Jon and Rachel are just like us. Similar goals, similar values and similar loves. I will never forget being at a Shabbat meal in Berkeley where Rachel, ever practical and focused on the “important stuff,” told us how she asked that Jon provide her with exercise equipment in lieu of fancy jewelry.A deeply loving mother deeply in love with her firstborn, I can vividly recollect the headphones Rachel showed us that she would place over her head together with the bottle of tequila she would pull out while sleep-training baby Hersh. It pained her to hear him cry even though she knew he needed to learn how to self-soothe. I can’t allow myself to fully internalize how heart-rending it must have been knowing her son was trapped, in real pain, and without a parent nearby who could soothe him when he truly needed to be soothed.
My eldest, Elijah, is returning to spend a second year to study at the same seminary in Jerusalem that I was attending when I first met Rachel nearly 30 years ago. In March of next year, he plans to enlist in the IDF and help prevent the suffering and hell that Jon and Rachel will now endure for a lifetime.
Soon after the Oct. 7 massacre, I listened to a discussion led by Rabbi Reuven Taragin reflecting on the greatest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. He explained that while he may not always be able to explain the “why” of a terrible occurrence happening, it is in our power to determine how we react.
I cannot fathom why Hersh or the other hostages were taken or murdered.But what I can fathom, through Jon and Rachel’s tireless campaigning on behalf of the hostages and unceasing efforts to protect innocents, is the notion that the choices we make matter.
I cannot fathom why Hersh or the other hostages were taken or murdered. But what I can fathom, through Jon and Rachel’s tireless campaigning on behalf of the hostages and unceasing efforts to protect innocents, is the notion that the choices we make matter. Let us honor Hersh and the memory of all others senselessly murdered by the Hamas death cult and redouble our efforts to bring them all home now. May the memory of each of the precious lives lost be a blessing and may we honor them in the choices we make to free those who are shackled.
Jonathan Stern is a former President of Beth Jacob Congregation
In what world are Al Jazeera, MSNBC and Mother Jones considered reliable sources but Fox News, The New York Post and Daily Mail are not? Answer: Wikipedia, where editors can only summarize what reliable sources say … or at least sources that Wikipedia editors have determined to be reliable.
Wikipedia is unequivocally the world’s go-to site for information. Not only is it often the first website to appear on a Google search, studies have shown that students begin the research process for their assignments by looking at Wikipedia and using the sources that the site provides. But what happens when the world’s go-to site for information uses biased sources under the guise of neutrality?
“There’s a fundamental problem with sourcing and what is considered a reliable source [on Wikipedia],” Wikipedia editor Jonathan Weiss (“JWeiss11” on Wikipedia), who has described himself as being “something of a centrist,” told me in August 2021. “Even if Wikipedia as itself is totally neutral, it can only reflect the reliable sources, and I think if you look at the landscape of news media and what’s coming out of academia — certainly the last 10 or 20 years — if you weigh everything that’s coming out equally, it’s going to be biased left.” But then Wikipedia’s “own bias” amplifies the bias in the media and academia, Weiss argued. “A lot of right-wing sites are basically inadmissible … whereas these Marxist opinion magazines are fine.”
How sources are viewed on Wikipedia ultimately comes down to what’s known as consensus; consensus is a combination of the number of editors who weigh in on a discussion and the strength of their arguments as it pertains to site policy. Usually, a supermajority of editors is needed for there to be consensus for a change per my editor sources. Oftentimes editors can collegially agree amongst themselves on what the consensus is, but there are instances where a closer (an uninvolved Wikipedian in good standing) is needed to render a verdict on the discussion based on the numbers and argument strength. In rare cases the minority view in a discussion can win if their argument is strong and the majority view’s is considered weak on policy grounds. The policy arguments can make this subjective; in regards to sources, Wikipedia’s reliable sources (RS) guideline states that the reliability of a source is based on if it’s “independent” and has “a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy.”
Additionally, Wikipedia’s verifiability policy states that article “content is determined by previously published information” by reliable sources “rather than editors’ beliefs, opinions, experiences, or previously unpublished ideas or information.” The site’s neutral point of view (NPOV) policy also states that Wikipedia articles are supposed to “fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in those sources.” In other words, reliable sources determine Wikipedia article content and how much prominence to give to each viewpoint; thus, what is considered a reliable source is crucial for Wikipedia.
“Wikipedia in a sense doesn’t trust us as editors and thus we make the assumption that the sources (both in terms of volume and quality) will help us decide what how much relative (or even any) emphasis we should give any aspect of any topic,” an editor told me. “That is a bad idea if you make two assumptions. First would be that the sources as a whole are neutral with respect to the subject and are truly proportional to the relative weight of various parts of the topic. I think it actually works well in cases where that holds true (say articles about sports teams). It fails when our sources themselves have an inherent bias and that bias is used to exclude one set of voices while embracing another.”
Indeed, a look at Wikipedia’s “Reliable Sources/Perennial Sources” (RSP) list of the most frequently discussed sources––which an editor told me “is treated like an official guideline”––shows that right-leaning sites like The Daily Mail, Breitbart News, The Epoch Times, The Daily Caller, and Newsmax are “deprecated,” meaning that they’re generally prohibited. The New York Post, The Daily Wire, The Federalist, The Washington Free Beacon and Quillette are among the sources that are in the “generally unreliable” category, meaning that it “should normally not be used” on Wikipedia. Fox News is considered generally unreliable for reporting on politics from Nov. 2020 onward, a decision that occurred following their settlement with Dominion (prior to this, Fox News’s talk shows were already considered generally unreliable).
The best way to understand the difference between “generally unreliable” and “deprecated” is through the lens of what an editor told me: “Generally unreliable sources might still be used for really basic factual claims or possibly quotes. Deprecated sources are presumed to just flat make stuff up. So an unreliable source might feature a climate change denier to talk about why the new climate change bill is a bad idea. The idea being they are interviewing someone who is wrong so we don’t listen to them. A deprecated source might just invent the quotes or even the scientist … However, in practice it seems like people suggest deprecation just because they don’t like the source. They rarely point to any examples of fabrication etc. Personally I’m opposed to it in general since I think it seems to be used indiscriminately.” The editor also told me: “I think it was a bad thing for Wikipedia that they started this [RSP] list as it shifts away from asking ‘is this article reliable for this claim’ to ‘can we get this entire source thrown out because we don’t like it?’”
To be fair, there are certainly some right-leaning outlets that are usable on Wikipedia; The Wall Street Journal, The Telegraph and the since-shuttered The Weekly Standard are considered “generally reliable.” National Review, The Washington Examiner and Washington Times are considered “marginally reliable.” But, as Wikipedia Co-Founder Larry Sanger has noted in a 2021 blog post excoriating his former website as being “more one-sided than ever,” outlets like The Weekly Standard and Wall Street Journal are “often centrist as conservative, and they are generally careful never to leave the current Overton Window of progressive thought. They are the ‘loyal opposition’ of the progressive media hegemony.”
Meanwhile, The New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian and CNN are all considered “generally reliable” on Wikipedia’s RSP list. This alone creates a left-leaning bias on Wikipedia, but what makes it even worse is that far-left sources — MSNBC, Al Jazeera, The Nation, Mother Jones, The Intercept and Jacobin — as well as partisan sources like Vox are also rated as “generally reliable” on Wikipedia. The Huffington Post’s politics section (excluding politics, Huffington Post is generally reliable but their contributors are considered generally unreliable), Salon and the left-leaning Media Matters for America are considered “marginally reliable” (meaning they can be used in certain context-dependent situations). Further, Huffington Post and Salon each have 27,393 and 8,933 pages of citations on Wikipedia, respectively; those numbers for National Review and Washington Examiner are 3,404 and 2,672, respectively.
What makes [Wikipedia’s bias] even worse is that far-left sources — MSNBC, Al Jazeera, The Nation, Mother Jones, The Intercept and Jacobin — as well as partisan sources like Vox are rated as “generally reliable” on Wikipedia.
One way editors are able to get away with this ideological disparity in sources: How other reliable sources view a source is a determining factor of its reliability. “How accepted and high-quality reliable sources use a given source provides evidence, positive or negative, for its reliability and reputation,” Wikipedia’s RS guideline states. “The more widespread and consistent this use is, the stronger the evidence. For example, widespread citation without comment for facts is evidence of a source’s reputation and reliability for similar facts, whereas widespread doubts about reliability weigh against it.” Further, Wikipedia’s RS guideline actually states that “reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective. Sometimes non-neutral sources are the best possible sources for supporting information about the different viewpoints held on a subject.” Past discussions on these sources show editors acknowledging such leftist sources are biased, but argue that they are not known for promoting misinformation and that such sources are held in high regard by other reliable sources––meaning that editors seem to be fine with biased sources only when it serves their narrative.
“Many of the sources on the right are ruled as unusable based on a few common grounds. 1: They will say something about climate that can be called denialism and thus they are viewed as inaccurate,” an editor told me. “2. Basically the same as #1 but about the 2020 elections. Often the detail of the claim isn’t clearly false or is about a detail that may have merit. However, since the mainstream sources have said there were no issues with 2020 anyone who raises any issues is viewed as ‘election denier.’ 3. Same as 1 and 2 but about COVID. It also hurts that often mainstream media/left wing sources won’t get facts from the right … but they are happy to ask far left sources for an opinion or credit their work. Thus a source on the right has trouble establishing credibility and we treat the Southern Poverty Law Center as more reliable than [the libertarian think-tank] Cato [Institute] despite the clear bias and issues with the SPLC. Over time this certainly makes it harder to use sources on the right.” The SPLC is considered generally reliable while Cato has a marginally reliable rating.
The editor also explained to me that part of the reason for this is that the media puts Fox and other conservative sources “under a microscope,” thus making it “easy for editors to cite ‘Fox was wrong’ examples but harder to do the same for left-leaning sites.” The result is that “we have clearly left-leaning sources that are seen as reliable providing their view, but we don’t have a counterbalancing view … because we don’t have the right leaning sources to provide their case.” Since editors are only allowed to pick from mostly left-wing sources, it becomes difficult to counter the insertion of “subjective claims” into a Wikipedia page such as calling an action “racist/sexist/phobist etc” when “sources on the left are likely to say it is while sources on the right are likely to say it isn’t,” an editor told me.
Legacy media outlets have promulgated false stories, but Wikipedia editors tend to handwave such errors away. For instance, some editors argued in a 2021 discussion that The Washington Post should be downgraded to marginally reliable since the outlet has published stories they had to correct, such as the story that claimed Covington Catholic High School kids mocked a Native American man at the 2019 March for Life rally and resulted in a defamation lawsuit against the paper, ended with an out-of-court settlement. Other examples of misreported stories in The Washington Post cited in the discussion was the story that Russia was providing bounties to Taliban members to kill American soldiers and that Trump said “find the fraud” in Georgia in the 2020 election. But the consensus of editors argued that the Post should still be generally reliable because reliable sources “can make mistakes and correct them when they occur” and that the Post’s errors aren’t as frequent as Fox News’s errors.
“Fox really stepped in it with the Dominion thing,” an editor told me. “But I do feel that The Washington Post is guided by politics rather than factual reporting too much of the time… or at least too much of the time when editors want to use it as a source for political related articles on Wikipedia. For this reason, I would downplay its characterizations and the amount of weight it gives topics when used on Wikipedia in political areas. However, too many editors like the bias so I don’t see it changing.”
Jewish Virtual Library (JVL), which The Algemeiner described in 2013 as being the “the most comprehensive online Jewish encyclopedia in the world,” was designated as generally unreliable in 2020 mainly due to editors arguing that some of its material directly cites Wikipedia and that it’s basically “a glorified blog” for respected Middle East analyst Mitchell Bard. Blogs are only usable on Wikipedia if the author is an expert in the relevant field. An editor explained to me that the consensus on Wikipedia is that JVL “can be used for the purpose of self-published expert, but that JVL itself hasn’t established itself as an outlet with a reputation for accuracy and fact-checking. I’m not sure how it would do so now that it’s generally unreliable. It would probably need to either have other RS saying it is, or improve their methodology and editorial standards pages on their site to get editors to change their minds.”
CAMERA will more likely than not be dismissed as an unreliable partisan source if it’s brought up in a discussion.
On the other hand, Mondoweiss is considered marginally reliable even though journalist John Ware noted in a recent Fathom Journal article that Mondoweiss “marked 7 October as a day to ‘celebrate’ and that ‘we must raise the banner of ‘searing bullets and blood-stained knives’” and is part of the “alternative media outlets who are now in the forefront of challenging Israel’s claims that there was widespread sexual violence.” Ware thoroughly debunks each instance of Mondoweiss’ reporting on the matter. “This type of debunking is how it’s supposed to work,” an editor told me. “A detailed list and set of arguments showing impartial fact-checkers casting doubt or debunking.”
Though Ware’s article has not been discussed amongst editors regarding Mondoweiss’s reliability, it seems unlikely that Mondoweiss will be downgraded anytime soon. Because the anti-Israel editors have the numbers, they have consistentlyfended off past efforts to downgrade Mondoweiss and claim there’s consensus for its “marginally reliable” rating.
“One of the most frustrating things about this stuff is that I always tried to be intellectually honest about sources and supported removing many ostensibly pro-Israel sources if they didn’t seem to meet the bar I assumed Wikipedia required, while most of these guys give a pass to absolute crap like Mondoweiss or Max Blumenthal,” said one editor with thousands of edits who grew disillusioned with Wikipedia. Blumenthal’s “The Grayzone” was deprecated in 2020, which another editor told me means that Blumenthal himself is de-facto deprecated. New College of Florida English Professor David Mikics wrote in a 2015 Tablet piece that Blumenthal, the son of longtime Clinton ally Sidney Blumenthal, is an “anti-Zionist polemic dripping with cartoon-like, racially weighted depictions of Israeli Jews” whose work has been endorsed by antisemite David Duke. Additionally, biology researcher Dr. Michal Perach wrote in a Nov. 2023 Haaretz op-ed that Blumenthal has whitewashed Hamas’ atrocities on Oct. 7 and denied war crimes committed by Russia, China and Syria.
But perhaps the most problematic source on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is Al Jazeera. Journalist Douglas Murray has noted in a New York Post op-ed that Al Jazeera is “founded, funded and directed by the terrorist-supporting state of Qatar” and that “a number of Al Jazeera journalists reporting on Israel’s war against terrorists in Gaza were — er —terrorists” with alleged ties to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, though Al Jazeera denies these allegations. And yet there are more than 5,000 pages worth of citations to the Qatari-funded news outlet on Wikipedia and there are countless instances in which Al Jazeera is cited for facts (also known as wikivoice). “It’s quite widely cited for all sorts of topics,” an editor told me. I have heard varying opinions from my editor sources as to what Al Jazeera’s reliability should be, but what is clear from my sources is that Al Jazeera’s “generally reliable” rating is too generous. “I haven’t seen Al Jazeera make retractions; it needs to actually acknowledge it and not issue a stealth retraction,” an editor said. “Other Middle East state-funded sources like [the Hezbollah-affiliated] Al Mayadeen or some of the Russian ones were easily deprecated.” This editor believes that Al Jazeera should at least be downgraded to the “marginally reliable” rating.
Al Jazeera had quietly taken down a video in March about a woman in Gaza who alleged that Israeli soldiers raped Palestinians at Al Shifa Hospital; the story was proven to be false. But when this stealth retraction was pointed out in a Wikipedia discussion, editors dismissed and handwaved away the critique by arguing, among other things, that Al Jazeera had correctly reported that someone had made the allegation. Never mind the fact that no reputable news outlet would run a serious allegation like that without some sort of corroboration. Editors have defended Al Jazeera in variousdiscussions by claiming that that the Qatari-funded network’s occasional mistakes doesn’t mean the outlet is unreliable overall and that other reliable sources frequently cite it.
But Wikipedia articles aren’t even safe from anti-Israel sources that are considered unreliable, as one editor told me that anti-Israel editors have a bad habit of “sneaking in sources” like the Turkish state-run Anadolu Agency, which is considered generally unreliable for controversial topics and international politics. For example, as I have previously reported, there are multiple citations to Anadolu Agency in the Wikipedia “Gaza genocide” article.
Additionally, an editor pointed out to me that there have been efforts of late to downgrade Jewish sources, as in May there was an attempt to downgrade the Jewish Chronicle, though for now it has survived with its status quo rating of generally reliable but no consensus that on if it’s “reliable for topics related to the British Left, Muslims, Islam, and Palestine/Palestinians,” per the RSP list. A discussion regarding AlHaTorah.org, a Torah library website, was recently started in an attempt to cast doubt on its reliability, though that discussion appears to have stalled out.
And of course, the mainstream media and the previously mentioned far-left sources are all biased against Israel, whereas various right-leaning sources provide more balanced coverage on Israel.
“In the wake of Oct. 7, ‘generally reliable’ sources have trafficked in disinformation, as when The New York Times splashed the Al-Ahli hospital bombing hoax over its front page, helping spark violent anti-Jewish riots across the world; or when The New Yorker legitimized Holocaust inversion — a long-running staple of anti-Zionist propaganda originating in the 1960s USSR,” scholar Izabella Tabarovsky wrote in Tablet. “Conservative outlets, on the other hand, have produced reporting that tells Israel’s side of the story and have looked far more critically at the anti-Israel campus protests. The ‘generally unreliable’ Washington Free Beacon has arguably produced the most extensive reporting on the protests. Wikipedia editors, however, are warned against using the Beacon as a source, which is why of the 353 references accompanying Wikipedia’s article on the pro-Palestinian campus protests, the overwhelming majority is to liberal and far-left sources plus Al Jazeera.” Further buttressing her point is that, as Murray pointed out, The Washington Post’s “foreign desk alone includes six journalists who previously worked for Al Jazeera. When people wonder how the media go awry, this is a textbook ‘how.’” The same applies to Wikipedia as well.
One editor told me they’re optimistic that “over time pro-Hamas sources will be downgraded … Unfortunately I think all the scare tactics and firing squad tactics have made pro-Israel editors afraid to opine.”
As long as this ideological disparity exists in what is considered a reliable source on Wikipedia, the world’s go-to site for information will continue to be biased and one-sided on contentious political topics.
Robert Mizrachi is calm. In fact, he is one of the calmest Jews I have spoken to all year.
Perhaps Mizrachi is calm because he lives in Florida and is more insulated from the onslaught of antisemitic hate that has escalated in more left-leaning states after Oct. 7.
Perhaps he is calm because in his field of work, politics is practically a non-issue; once the action begins, focus and technique always trump race and identity.
Or perhaps Mizrachi, who is 45, is calm because he has a definitive understanding of who he is as an Israeli-American whose paternal lineage escaped Iraq, and whose maternal relatives escaped Poland, Austria and Russia (or were wiped out in European concentration camps).
Did I mention that Mizrachi is a five-time World Series of Poker (WSOP) champion who, after winning his most recent WSOP bracelet in July, asked for “Hatikva,” the Israeli national anthem, to be played on loudspeakers?
Mizrachi has a habit of requesting “Hatikva” each time he wins a major bracelet. “This year, with everything going on, and all of the heartbreak, as well as the antisemitism, I wanted to represent, to show the world that I stand for Israel,” he told me from his home in Florida during a recent phone interview. “This war isn’t going to end for a while, and it was a touching feeling this year when ‘Hatikva’ was played. A lot of my poker friends are Jewish and Israeli. I wasn’t born in Israel, but I feel like it’s my country, and it’s important to me. I have a lot of Israeli in me.”
The Proud Jew
Mizrachi is an unabashedly proud Jew who asked to schedule our interview before Shabbat began. “I was always proud to be Jewish. I’m proud of my heritage. And with Shabbat, I do the best I can,” he said. “I have a strong family. And I love going to Israel as much as I can.” Mizrachi has many friends and family, including cousins, aunts, and uncles who live in Israel. His paternal grandmother, Marcel Mizrachi, passed away in Israel this year.
Mizrachi was born in Florida in the late 1970s. His father, Ezra, was born in Israel and met his mother, Susan, in the late 1960s in New York. The couple had four sons — Robert, Michael and Eric (twins), and Daniel, before divorcing in 2009. Mizrachi grew up in North Miami Beach “feeling like an Israeli-American Jew.” He attended Hebrew school, lived in a kosher home, and often attended synagogue with his family on Shabbat.
Recalling his childhood Jewish experiences, Mizrachi reflected fondly on holidays such as Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Passover. “We had to be together, at the seders, and the Shabbat dinners,” he said. “I still love them all.”
Mizrachi learned poker “by watching people” and was 18 years old when he began to serve as a dealer on a Fort Lauderdale cruise ship. He played his first legal tournament in Las Vegas when he was 21. “I was never nervous,” he said. “I was curious about how others would play and how well I would play.”
He also taught his three younger brothers how to play poker. Like Robert, Michael is also a poker champion and has played in tournaments worldwide. “I showed Mike how to play a little and he went on his way,” said Mizrachi. “I won first, and then he started winning a lot.”
“A Game of Skill”
Robert and Michael began traveling to different casinos to play poker. Eric and Daniel soon followed, though Eric, who lives in Las Vegas, is also a professional magician and DJ. “One year, in 2010, we all cashed in the World Series of Poker in the $10,000 main event, with thousands of players,” Mizrachi recalled.
Robert Mizrachi (left) and his brother, Eric, at a pro-Israel rally in Las Vegas in 2023. Photo courtesy of Robert Mizrachi
That same year, Robert and Michael were both playing the $50,000 Poker Players Championship, which their family watched on TV. “I had the best hand,” Robert explained, “and Mike had nothing. I was all in. My mom was screaming and pulling for my brother to win.” In the end, Robert placed fifth and Michael won.
“Rob and I started taking poker seriously when I was 15 and he was 17,” Michael told me. “We learned a lot from each other. I played a lot in underground games and casino cruises. We both started playing online poker and learned so much.”
During their first poker trip together, Robert taught Michael, who was 18, about money management by dividing $1,000 into seven envelopes and challenging his younger brother to set a budget for himself each day. At the end of the first day, Robert returned to the hotel room to find seven torn envelopes and zero cash. Michael returned home from the trip to Arizona having learned a vital lesson on budgeting, discipline and the ease and speed with which one can lose an entire fortune.
Initially, Mizrachi’s family was not thrilled over his decision to skip college and become a professional poker player (and to guide his brothers along a similar path). “In the beginning, they weren’t happy or supportive,” he said. “They were concerned that I wasn’t going to college or that I wouldn’t have a normal life. Most people think this is just gambling. They don’t realize that poker is a game of skill.”
The Jack-of-All-Trades
Soon enough, Mizrachi’s parents recognized that their sons were gaining success. “After Mike and I won big tournaments, they understood you could do well playing poker,” Robert said.
I asked Mizrachi whether being a WSOP champion demands specific mental acumen. “It’s a combination of reading your opponent, feeling him out, knowing the math and the ranges of what people can have at any given time, a lot of calculations, and experience,” he said. When asked if there were parallels between poker and life itself, Mizrachi responded, “Poker is like a game of life. Every decision requires intensity, and you can lose by making a bad decision. Just like in life, you really have to think it through.”
“Poker is like a game of life. Every decision requires intensity, and you can lose by making a bad decision. Just like in life, you really have to think it through.”
Robert has played in poker tournaments worldwide, including in the United States, Spain, Monaco, France, Italy, Australia and the Bahamas. He has also played cash games in Israel. “I always feel welcome when I’m there,” he said regarding Israel. To date, Robert was named a World Series of Poker champion in 2007, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2024. He won his latest poker bracelet in Las Vegas this summer during a World Series of Poker championship that featured thousands of players and 90 tournaments.
But Robert is also a proverbial jack-of-all-trades who also dabbles in cryptocurrency and real estate investments. In 2022, he wrote a book, “Horse,” which teaches readers how to play five different kinds of poker. Robert also plays pickleball six days a week. Not surprisingly, he admits that he is “very competitive” during pickleball.
Robert also has a love affair with food. The champion card shark seems even happier cooking at home than seated at a poker table, and while I assumed I would have little in common with a cutthroat poker player (albeit an incredibly nice one), his family-driven priorities rendered him endearingly relatable and down-to-earth.
“Give me a few minutes. I’m cooking,” Mizrachi told me when I needed to fact-check more information. The man who has won millions in high-stakes, professional poker tournaments was busy at home, cooking wild salmon burritos, and even sent me a delectable picture, to boot. A single father (he and his wife divorced in 2016), Mizrachi delights in cooking for his two children, age 16 and 11. “I’ve been cooking all my life,” he said.
After our interview, I realized that I still had more questions for Robert (see accompanying interview). I asked him via text message if he is spiritual, if he believes in G-d, and if he has ever felt that G-d has helped him in his many wins and successes. His response, in his typical, no-nonsense style, was succinct and confident. “Believe in G-d,” he wrote back.
Proud Jews exist in all forms, including Israeli Americans who win WSOP titles and insist that the national anthem of the Jewish State is played for all to hear. It’s been an agonizing year of unknowns, but Robert’s innately confident gamble in a strong and watchful G-d is one bet I am still willing to take.
Q&A with Robert Mizrachi
The following has been edited for clarity and length.
Jewish Journal: You are unapologetically pro-Israel, and you truly own your Jewish identity. Do you care what fans or anyone think about your steadfast Zionism?
Robert Mizrahi: No, I don’t care. I’m very pro-Israel. I know that standing with terrorists is against all of my beliefs. I saw what happened on 9/11 and the role of fanatic Islam, and how Palestinians celebrated both 9/11 and Oct. 7. I really don’t care what anyone thinks. Israel is like my right hand and America is my left. I need them both and I love them both.
“I really don’t care what anyone thinks. Israel is like my right hand and America is my left. I need them both and I love them both.”
JJ: How did you first learn about Oct. 7?
RM: I was sleeping at my friend’s house whose family and kids were in Israel. I woke up and saw his face. He was crying, along with his wife. I have so much family in Israel. I couldn’t believe it [Oct. 7]happened. It was so sad and heartbreaking to see how evil it was. I was in shock and in tears.
JJ: Have you personally experienced antisemitism this year?
RM: In Florida, it’s different. Our governor is pro-Israel, I was in [Las] Vegas this year and I joined a pro-Israel rally in solidarity with hostages in late October 2023, in front of Caesars [Palace]. A lot of police were there.
JJ: Are there any parallels between the game of poker and the reality of how countries such as America, Israel and other Middle Eastern countries, including Iran, are behaving today?
RM: The conflict in the Middle East is sad, especially because Hamas destroyed so many lives after Oct. 7. Like in poker, our enemies are always trying to ambush us. And like in poker, we have to make better plays to stop them. We also have to thank G-d for Iron Dome, for the IDF and the Mossad, and for America’s support.
“Like in poker, our enemies are always trying to ambush us. And like in poker, we have to make better plays to stop them.“
JJ: How did you stay busy during the first two years of COVID-19?
RM: During COVID, everyone was playing online games at home. I spent a lot of time doing meditation, cooking, going to the beach, and trying to spend time with my kids.
JJ: Have your children expressed any interest in playing poker?
RM: There’s no interest. My 16-year-old son is a mathematician. I would teach him how to play if he asked me, but I don’t want to force it. I’d rather my kids do something else, and play poker as a hobby. Maybe my daughter is a little more interested than my son.
JJ: What do you wish more people knew about playing poker?
RM: Poker is about reading people. It’s a psychological game. There’s a lot of technology and software right now that lets you study the game. With poker, I love the interactions with other people. I love that you can put your mind to it and have fun doing it. And that you make money. It feels good winning and making a big score.
JJ: How do world poker tournaments work in general?
RM: You compete each day in a different tournament. Fifteen percent of players will cash in and 85% leave with nothing. For each tournament you win at the World Series of Poker, we say you’ve won a bracelet. Michael won a bracelet as well in 2024. I’ve helped build tournament structures and what levels to play, or how to organize a tournament in a mathematical way. I’ve also invented two poker games, Super Stud High Low [played in casinos], and another High Low Chinese game.
JJ: What is it like to compete against Michael, your younger brother?
RM: We don’t really compete against each other, unless we’re at the same table and forced to. It happens sometimes. In 2010, we were both at the final table. That was a memorable table. Michael took me out of the tournament. Sometimes, Michael and I can read each other’s faces. And sometimes, I feel like the wise older brother.
JJ: You’re a home cook and a foodie. Favorite Israeli foods?
RM: I got to have my shawarma and hummus. There’s a hummus restaurant in [Las] Vegas called Pitas that makes the best hummus I ever had. My late grandmother, Marcel Mizrachi, used to live in the U.S., and then she made aliyah. She used to make the best pacha, malawach and kubba. We grew up eating the red kubba, the one that’s made with beets.
JJ: Any final messages you would like to share with readers?
RM: Keep praying for the hostages to come home.
For more information about Robert Mizrachi, follow him on X and Instagram @pokerrob24
Tabby Refael is an award-winning writer, speaker and weekly columnist for The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. Follow her on X and Instagram @TabbyRefael
Now that the presidential debate is behind us and we turn toward the final weeks of this unprecedented campaign, it’s worth taking a moment to assess where the two candidates stand with Jewish voters and the potential impact of the Israel-Hamas war on the election. Even though the Jewish community comprises only 2.5% of the nation’s population, larger concentrations of Jews in key swing states like Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada could have an outsized impact on the final outcome. So let’s dig a bit deeper:
Donald Trump told the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) last week that he expected to receive roughly half of the Jewish vote in November, which seems somewhat fanciful given the 20-30% that exit polls showed him receiving in his previous campaigns. But even if the post-Gaza political environment has not changed quite that dramatically, there’s no question that the war has upended American politics, played a contributing role in the premature end of Joe Biden’s political career, and noticeably changed the way both Trump and Kamala Harris have navigated the campaign trail.
In his speech to the RJC, Trump reiterated an argument that he and many other Republicans have made over the years: that the GOP’s stronger support for Israel should lead to increased backing from Jewish voters. This contention is based on the supposition that Israel is the most important issue to most American Jews, which public opinion polling has shown not to be the case for most of the 21st century. We know that most Jewish voters tend to prioritize domestic policy – especially social and cultural issues – more heavily when weighing their vote. This has frustrated Trump greatly and has led to his use of highly-charged language directed toward our community, which leads to even more polarization.
But while Democrats have happily scooped up large majorities of the Jewish vote for decades by focusing on issues closer to home, Harris’ team made an odd decision last month when they tapped Middle East policy veteran Ilan Goldenberg as their campaign liaison to the Jewish community. Goldenberg, who was born in Jerusalem and renounced his Israeli citizenship to work in the Defense Department in the Obama Administration, has been Harris’ advisor on Middle Eastern issues during her time as vice president but does not have any background in American politics. Despite his long history and deep knowledge of Israel and the surrounding region, selecting someone without any previous campaign experience is an unusual choice, especially in an election that is expected to be excruciatingly close.
Given how the Gaza war has intensified the deep divisions within the Democratic Party over the U.S. role in the region, it’s entirely possible that Harris chose someone for this role precisely because he has not been involved in the party’s internecine battles in the past and neither pro-Israel nor pro-Palestinian factions see Goldenberg as part of the opposing camp. But he has been a fierce critic of Benjamin Netanyahu in the past (as have many other Democrats who are strong supporters of Israel), which may provide opportunities for the Trump campaign to pick up some additional Jewish support on this hyper-polarized political landscape.
Make no mistake: Trump will not win the Jewish vote or come anywhere close, his spectacular predictions notwithstanding. But just as his campaign has made inroads among Black and Latino voters, even slightly decreased margins among Jews in the highly-contested states mentioned above could have a tremendous impact. In a campaign in which every vote counts, and the Harris team has spared no effort to assemble the most talented and experienced team for every other role, Goldenberg’s lack of political experience makes him a potentially risky hire. If Harris comes up short and narrowly loses one or more of those battleground states, her advisors will face questions about why they did not opt for a more conventional candidate for this position.
Trump will not win the Jewish vote or come anywhere close. But even slightly decreased margins among Jews in highly-contested states could have a tremendous impact.
Ironically, Goldenberg’s selection seems to demonstrate the Harris campaign’s belief of the heightened importance of Israel in Jewish voters’ considerations. It would be even more ironic if those Middle East-focused voters helped elect her opponent.
Dan Schnur is the U.S. Politics Editor for the Jewish Journal. He teaches courses in politics, communications, and leadership at UC Berkeley, USC and Pepperdine. He hosts the monthly webinar “The Dan Schnur Political Report” for the Los Angeles World Affairs Council & Town Hall. Follow Dan’s work at www.danschnurpolitics.com.
Editor’s note: This is a series of 12 posts from the head of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Sept. 9.
1. Once again, there are folks outside the mainstream Jewish community (or outside the Jewish community altogether) who want to tell Jews what antisemitism is and isn’t, especially when it comes to anti-Zionism. Here’s what we at the ADL believe.
2. Criticizing the Israeli government or its policies is not ipso facto antisemitic. In fact, most Israelis and Jews do it on a regular basis — including ADL. It is a complete fiction to make this assertion.
3. Advocating for Palestinian self-determination is not ipso facto antisemitic. In fact, ADL believes in this goal. It is absolutely untrue to claim that ADL or other mainstream Jewish groups state that all pro-Palestinian activism is inherently anti-Jewish.
4. By contrast, calling for the elimination of the Jewish state of Israel — home to half of all Jews worldwide — is antisemitic. It is an existential threat. It is amoral in every sense.
5. Zionism is not some obscure political theory that was bolted onto Judaism over the past 150 years. For millennia, Jews have yearned to return to Zion (aka the land of Israel). This is manifested in innumerable Jewish prayers, holidays and lifecycle events.
6. Jews always have had a presence in Israel – enduring and outlasting countless rulers, colonial regimes, and foreign empires. To deny the centrality of the land of Israel to the Jewish faith is akin to denying the centrality of monotheism to Judaism.
Jews always have had a presence in Israel – enduring and outlasting countless rulers, colonial regimes, and foreign empires. To deny the centrality of the land of Israel to the Jewish faith is akin to denying the centrality of monotheism to Judaism.
7. With the rise of the modern Zionist movement (a reaction to rising antisemitism in Europe), some elements of the Jewish community opposed it for practical, religious or other reasons. And yet, the sheer savagery of the Holocaust, the refusal of countries to accept the survivors, and the subsequent expulsion/pogroms of Jews from Arab lands only confirmed the necessity of Israel.
8. While some Jews may still argue, the practical reality is simple: the anti-Zionist movement singles out the world’s sole Jewish state & actively works to delegitimize and dismantle it, holding Israel to double standards not applied to any other country. This is antisemitic.
9. Many not only target the Jewish state, but also menace Jewish institutions & threaten Jewish individuals. They hold all Jewish people collectively responsible for the turmoil in the Middle East. They regularly employ harassment, intimidation & violence. This is antisemitic.
10. At the end of the day, like all countries on Earth, Israel is imperfect. It has deep flaws. But it is a Jewish, democratic, Zionist state with a self-corrective capability. Hypothetical academic discussions, misguided boycotts and poorly informed protests won’t change that.
11. In the Ivory Tower, there may be philosophical debates about anti-Zionism. It might make for good copy on op-ed pages. But at the ADL, we are dealing with the undeniable reality of it — and, as an org committed to fighting antisemitism, we will continue to combat it.
12. And finally, I will conclude with a pro-tip. If you would not lecture other marginalized communities on whether/how they experience bias and discrimination, don’t lecture Jews on whether/how they experience antisemitism. It is patronizing and pathetic.
Jonathan A. Greenblatt is CEO and National Director of ADL (the Anti-Defamation League).
