While Javier Milei cried on Tuesday in front of the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the Argentine lower house threw down his omnibus law, with which the Argentine president intended to apply a large part of his ultra-liberal program, and which had been approved last week. His first big defeat.
Despite the fact that the internal situation is explosive, Milei is on a tour that includes a three-day visit to Israel with more religious than political motivation, since the president, a Catholic, has expressed his intention to convert to Judaism. Since he entered politics, he has shown closeness with Orthodox rabbis and follows their rites.
“The economist is embarked on a spiritual search,” writes journalist Juan Luis González in El loco (Planeta, 2023), the best biography of Milei. González explains that her approach to Judaism began about three years ago, when she met the Orthodox Sephardic rabbi Áxel Wahnish, from the Argentine Moroccan Jewish Community of Buenos Aires. Since then, Milei periodically maintains spiritual encounters with Wahnish, who daily sends him passages from the Torah so that he can study the books of the Old Testament. Wahnish will be Argentina’s ambassador to Israel.
The president always keeps God and the biblical texts in mind in his speeches. Common denominator with other right-wing populist leaders like Trump or Bolsonaro. In the electoral campaign, Milei displayed Israelite symbols at his rallies, which was questioned even by the Jewish community of Argentina, the largest in Latin America.
Even at his inauguration, Milei made reference to Judaism. “It is no coincidence that this presidential inauguration occurs during the holiday of Hanukkah, the festival of light, since it celebrates the true essence of freedom. The War of the Maccabees is the symbol of the triumph of the weak over the powerful,” said the far-right leader.
After the elections, and days before taking office, he participated in the Havdalah ceremony in Buenos Aires alongside the influential Franco-Moroccan rabbi David Hanania Pinto, who heads 17 communities around the world.
Before assuming power, Milei traveled to the United States and took the opportunity to visit the grave in New York of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, leader of the Jaba Lubavitch Hasidic movement.
In the political field, the anarcho-capitalist politician reiterated upon arriving in Israel that Argentina will move its embassy to Jerusalem, something that only five countries in the world have done, including the United States. Milei also announced that he will declare Hamas a terrorist organization. Both gestures provoked an immediate statement of rejection from Hamas. In 1992 and 1994, Argentina suffered the two largest anti-Semitic attacks in the history of Latin America.
