President Joe Biden called it “a good speech.”

Back home in Brooklyn, Schumer’s proud rabbi beamed.

“In this speech, he said what most of us think,” Timoner, senior rabbi of Congregation Beth Elohim, said in an interview with POLITICO. “There’s been a real fear in the American Jewish community of criticizing Israel. … He did something so great in breaking that silence.”

Schumer has attended Timoner’s synagogue near his home in Park Slope, Brooklyn for at least a decade. Timoner officiated his daughter’s wedding, blessed his three grandchildren and buried his father.

Orthodox Jewish organizations like Agudath Israel criticized Schumer’s remarks, accusing their usual ally of inappropriately intervening in another nation’s politics.

But Timoner leads a “Reform, pluralistic community,” she said — representing a liberal Jewish perspective she feels is often drowned out in American conversations about Israel.

The interview is edited for length and clarity.

Was this the right message for Schumer? And was this the right time?

I think that he said out loud what the overwhelming majority of American Jews are saying to each other, which is that Bibi Netanyahu is making the world less safe for Jews and making Israel less safe for Israelis.

Netanyahu himself has said that he completely opposes a two-state solution. And so he is an obstacle to peace. So yes, I think that what Senator Schumer said was brave and right.

In the Jewish community, it is often the case that the far left and the far right are by far the loudest voices. And there is a silent majority, which is the vast majority of American Jews, who are liberals who have a deep connection to Israel, and who desperately want to see a two-state solution and a Palestinian state that would live in safety and freedom and democracy next to an Israeli state that would live in safety and freedom and democracy.

There seems to be an evolving feeling about the war among more progressive Jews. Why do you think Schumer spoke up now?

From progressive to liberal, centrist Jews, there is a feeling of crisis right now.

That since Oct. 7, we have been absolutely devastated by the unbelievable atrocities of that day, and are in profound grief about it, desperate for the hostages to come home. Simultaneously, [we have been] horrified by the number of Palestinians who have died and the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, and shocked at the amount of antisemitism that we’re experiencing both on the left and on the right in the United States. And also watching an Israeli government that is, in its extremist qualities, betraying Jewish values.

It seems to me that he felt a need to lead with courage in this moment. And I think he did.

Schumer has endorsed Biden’s position of a “temporary cease-fire,” but differentiated from a permanent one, which he said “would only allow Hamas to regroup and launch further attacks on Israeli civilians.” Did you think he should have gone further?

The word cease-fire was difficult to use, even when, for me, it was becoming clear that this war had to end. That word had been taken by people who, in some cases, were using it for antisemitic purposes. In December, I did start to call for an immediate negotiated end to the war. That was the language I was using. And only in the last month have I started to use the word cease-fire. But it’s the same thing.

I think that Senator Schumer was trying to lay out a path forward. He was less addressing the next few weeks or months and more addressing the future — what needs to happen to get us to a path where both Israelis and Palestinians can live in safety and freedom. And that I think he did incredibly well.

Has this war united the New York Jewish community, or divided them more?

It’s done a little of both. We definitely have a generational divide happening in the Jewish world where younger Jews who’ve only grown up knowing an Israel that is an occupier and that has been occupying the West Bank and blockading Gaza for decades.

Part of what we need to address is the long silence of the Jewish establishment about the occupation of Palestinians, and the ways that the Netanyahu government has sold the Israeli people on the idea that they can both have peace and allow settlers to run rampant over the human rights of Palestinians. And those things don’t go together.

So that’s what I was really applauding in Senator Schumer’s speech was that he was saying, yes, we must get to the end of this war. And what we’ve really got to do is get to the place where both Israelis and Palestinians can live in safety and freedom.

Are the folks who were more critical of this war from the beginning, have they been justified?

When we talk about cease-fire, it needs to be bilateral, and it needs to include the return of the hostages. And the forces on the left who’ve been calling for cease-fire have not been calling for bilateral, and many of them they’ve not been calling for hostage return. So that’s a really big difference. I do think that this war has to end immediately.

You’re a religious leader, not a politician, but do you feel like you can influence the majority leader, as his rabbi?

Look, Senator Schumer is always there on High Holy Days. He listens to my sermons. Sometimes they’ve moved him deeply, he’s told me. But he is a veteran leader. He has his own perspective. In this moment, I’m incredibly proud to be his rabbi. But I have no idea if I’m a major influence.

Each Yom Kippur we invite him and his family up for an aliyah to the Torah, like a special blessing at the Torah, just in acknowledgment of the huge responsibility that he has in leading our country. And I think people feel proud to have him be part of our congregation.

Republicans criticized Schumer’s speech immediately. Is there an electoral risk of Democrats being seen as too critical of Israel, and Republicans owning that message?

That would be a tragic mistake if people thought that. Supporting the most right-wing possible Israeli government is not actually supporting Israel. It’s not actually supporting Israelis.

I think that most Americans are going to see that [Schumer] was advocating a path that would make us safer, both American Jews and Israelis.