In Catholic Argentina, Javier Milei embraces Judaism

Arms spread with a black kippah on his head, Javier Milei, the Argentine president, presses his forehead against the Western Wall in Jerusalem (see picture) and begins to weep. Overwhelmed, he hugs his Orthodox rabbi, Shimon Axel Wahnish. Mr Milei’s visit in February to one of Judaism’s holiest sites was the most public moment yet in his embrace of the religion. At a rally last year in a Jewish part of Buenos Aires, the capital, the word shofar and an illustration of a man with the traditional Jewish ram’s horn were projected onto screens as the sound of the horn blared. In April Mr Milei was made an “ambassador of light” in a ceremony conducted at The Shul, a Hasidic synagogue in Surfside, Florida.