Argentina’s president wraps himself in Jewish symbols while taking a chainsaw to the country

The shofar is one of the sounds that ties me most deeply to my roots. Every Yom Kippur I go to the synagogue to hear it: that final blast at the close of the fast. Standing there with the people I love, I feel something close to a transcendent connection.

So it unsettled me to hear that same sound blasted across the screens at Javier Milei's closing campaign rally, followed by images of explosions and a lion in flames, weeks before he was elected president of Argentina on November 19, 2023.

Milei is known internationally for his libertarian politics. He campaigned brandishing a chainsaw as a symbol of his promise to slash public spending and shrink the state. Raised as a Catholic, the far-right president became increasingly open about his interest in Judaism during the campaign. He describes himself as the most Zionist head of state in the world.

Since he became president on December 10, 2023, he has visited Israel three times, wept at the Western Wall, and travelled repeatedly to New York to pray at the tomb of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe. He has promised to move Argentina's embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, breaking with the longstanding international consensus. He appointed his personal rabbi, Axel Wahnish, as Argentina's ambassador to Israel, and regards him as his spiritual guide.

He has called the Torah his favourite book and posts verses in Hebrew on social media. On X, interpreting the weekly parsha, he wrote: “Rivka, when she thought she had only one son, one who was lukewarm, without ideology, and played for both sides, that worried her a great deal.” The lesson, he concluded, was that “those who play for all sides are the worst of all”, before signing off “shabbat shalom”.