NCSY official will advise Ambassador Friedman

Rabbi Aryeh Lightstone, a longtime official in U.S. Orthodox Jewish organizations, will advise David Friedman, the just installed U.S. ambassador to Israel, the Jerusalem Post reported on Tuesday.

The Post said that the State Department confirmed that Lightstone, currently the regional director of the OU-affiliated National Council of Synagogue Youth, would have an advisory role at the embassy.

Lightstone also is a co-founder of Mekorot, an online Jewish education portal, and has served in a number of positions on Long Island.

According to his biography on the OU website, he has ties to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and to Ivanka Trump, President Donald Trump’s Jewish daughter who is advising her father in an unpaid position.

The Senate last month confirmed Friedman, a Long Islander who resides in the Village of Woodsburgh, in a mostly party-line vote.

Friedman was controversial in part because of his deep philanthropic investment in the development of communities in Judea and Samaria and for his broadsides targeting left-wing Jews who are critical of Israel, for which he has offered regrets.

 —with JTA