Conferences

The 2025 Faithful Left conference, the biggest yet, took a new tone. The theme, “Preserving of the Soul,” spoke to a society looking to find its path after two years of war. The audience leaned younger than it had in the previous conferences, speaking to the ongoing popularity of The Midrasha and Bnei Avraham as tools for bringing new activists into the movement, and the mainstage speakers framed the no-longer-new movement’s agenda. These included: Mikhael Manekin, one of the leaders of the Faithful Left; Prof. Efi Shoham-Steiner, one of the leaders of the demonstrations against the coup in Jerusalem, who lost his son in the war; Rabbi Tamar Elad-Appelbaum, rabbi of the Zion community and head of the Beit Midrash of the Israeli Rabbinate; social activist Malchi Rotner, associate director of the Haredi Institute for Democracy; Fida Shehadeh, social and political activist; Yonathan Konda, poet, spoken word artist and musician; Samech "Saz" Zakot, musician, actor and content creator; Dr. Tom Fogel, Jewish researcher of Islamic countries; Esther Sperber, co-founder of the Faithful Left movement in the US; Limor Yaakov Safrai, CEO of "HaSadeh" - a non-profit organization for religious-humanistic education.

Under the shadow of war, the Faithful Left held a second conference. This time, the events of October 7 loomed large, with families of those murdered and kidnapped from our community, as well as the implications of the war on the discourse of moral action in Israel.

The Faithful Left was born out of our 2023 conference, held as a gathering for all those interested in exploring this new juxtaposition of faith and politics. 150 people were expected – and 700 came.