Gen Z’s favorite rabbi

Recent years have witnessed an explosion of online anti-Semitism, particularly among Gen-Z men. Some of what is called anti-Semitism is legitimate criticism of the Israeli government. But plenty of it is straight-up, old-school Jew hatred. An obvious example is the onslaught of Instagram reels to the tune of “Hava Nagila,” with stereotypical caricatures of “the happy merchant,” often captioned, “Well, well, well,” or accompanied by Nazi imagery. Then there are the Groypers and others who openly, unabashedly attack Jews as Jews.

It’s a paradox of our online life, then, that one of the most popular figures among this very cohort is an ultra-Orthodox rabbi who believes that Jews do and should run the world: “The goyim gets angry, ‘the Jews in control, the Jews in control, they control the money.’ So who will control the money — you?” he exclaims. “You compare yourself to the chosen people? … It’s good for you that they run the country.” (“Goyim” is the Hebrew word for Gentiles, or non-Jews.) 

His name is Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi, and he has rapidly ascended over the past year on online shows and X, the app formerly known as Twitter. “Your entire story, it’s a made-up story,” he said flat-out of the New Testament, much to the anger of one interlocutor. Mizrachi has also debated the manosphere-icon-turned-Islamist streamer Sneako, who opened the stream by praising Mizrachi for being “a breath of fresh air, because at least you are honest about what you believe in.” And the rabbi has become the subject of a whole genre of memes — first on X, and now increasingly on Instagram, where more “normies” are encountering him for the first time.