By Jack Nicas and Daniel Politi
President Javier Milei of Argentina is a Catholic who leads Pope Francis’ native country.
He also regularly studies the Torah, attends Shabbat dinner and has said that perhaps his most important adviser is his rabbi.
Over the past several years, Milei has taken an intense and, among most world leaders, unusual interest in Judaism.
He has posted Hebrew verses from the Torah on social media, traveled internationally to meet rabbis, called Moses an inspiration and said that, if it were not for the challenges of observing the Jewish Sabbath while serving as president, he would convert to Judaism.
His growing devotion to the Jewish faith has also begun to inform Argentine policy.
The nation has become Latin America’s fiercest defender of Israel, declaring Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, a terrorist organization. Milei has pledged to move Argentina’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. And he has appointed his personal rabbi, Shimon Axel Wahnish, as Argentina’s ambassador to Israel.
He has also promised renewed efforts to seek justice for the 85 victims of the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The 30th anniversary of that attack is Thursday.
“We’re not here to do more of the same. We’re here to propose a break from what various governments have done” in response to the bombing, Milei said Wednesday night at a memorial event in Buenos Aires.
The attack has long been an open wound for Argentina’s Jewish community because no one has ever been held legally responsible for it.
Argentine courts have found that Iran was behind the attack and that the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah executed it. The courts named specific people, but the suspects have remained at large despite Interpol arrest notices. Argentine courts and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights have also found that past Argentine officials hindered investigations into the bombing.
In April, when a top court in Argentina reaffirmed the earlier findings on Iran’s role, Milei’s office hailed the decision, saying it “brought an end to decades of delays and cover-ups.”
Milei’s increasing connection to Judaism as the leader of an overwhelmingly Christian nation reflects his unorthodox approach to politics, which helped carry him to the presidency last year.
Milei was elected after telling Argentines that they must withstand more pain to fix the nation’s economic crisis. And while that so far has proved true — the pain part, anyway, with poverty soaring and the Argentine peso collapsing — his approval rates have remained high, around 50%.
Milei has even suggested that Judaism might deliver the answers to solving Argentina’s economic mess. “The rabbi who helps me study says that I should read the Torah from the perspective of economic analysis,” he told El País last year.
Argentines have become inured to economic turmoil, but they are not as accustomed to a leader who appears to have a stronger connection to Judaism than to Christianity, the faith that nearly 80% of the country says it follows.
Carlos Menem, Argentina’s president from 1989 to 1999, was raised Muslim but converted to Catholicism as he entered Argentine politics. Milei was raised Catholic but has called Francis an “imbecile” and a “dirty leftist.” He later apologized.
In April, while receiving the “ambassador of light” award at a Hasidic synagogue near Miami, Milei said that he had gotten his “Jewish values” from a grandfather who, shortly before death, discovered he was Jewish.
Argentina, a nation of 46 million, has the largest Jewish population in Latin America, with about 200,000 people in the country identifying as Jewish. Arriving in waves of immigration that began at the end of the 19th century, many sought refuge during World War II. Argentina also became a haven for fugitive Nazis.
Milei’s embrace of Judaism has been met with mixed reaction from Argentina’s Jewish community.
Rabbi Daniel Avruj, who leads a Conservative synagogue in Buenos Aires, said that Milei was a welcome change. When terrorists bombed the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 and the Jewish community center two years later, he said, “there was no president who wanted to talk about Judaism and Moses.”
He said Milei’s defense of Israel after the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 has made him “proud — not as a Jew, but as an Argentine.”
Some other Jewish Argentines disagree. The head of the Anne Frank museum in Buenos Aires has publicly worried that Milei’s criticism of Hamas could again make Argentina a target. Hamas said Argentina designated the group as terrorists to justify “genocide and ethnic cleansing” in the Gaza Strip.
Others note that Milei has aligned himself with a particularly Orthodox sector of Judaism. In his first trip abroad as president-elect last year, he went to New York to visit the tomb of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, an influential Hasidic leader known as the Rebbe.
And some accuse Milei of becoming interested in Judaism because he sees himself in the image of Moses as a liberator of the oppressed.
On Thursday, Milei planned to attend a memorial service for the 30th anniversary of the bombing of the community center, the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina, or AMIA, where a siren will sound at the same time that the attack occurred.
Milei’s government is pushing a bill that would greenlight trials in absentia for the Lebanese and Iranian citizens who Argentine courts have said were involved in the attack. Past efforts to approve trials in absentia failed to make it through Argentina’s Congress, and some in Argentina have questioned whether it is the right move.
Amos Linetzky, current president of the AMIA, said the organization had historically opposed the approach because it would rather see those responsible punished, not merely convicted in absentia. Yet he welcomed Milei’s efforts to pursue justice.
“Milei has shown total willingness and concern and a desire to prioritize the issue,” he said.
In February, Milei visited Francis at the Vatican. The two Argentines, despite their past tensions, hugged and spent an hour together. The Vatican later called the meeting “cordial.” Milei told Italian television, “I’m Catholic, though I’m basically a practitioner of Judaism.”
Milei brought along several advisers to meet the pope, too. They included his rabbi.
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