Being Jewish at Rededicate 250, the prayer revival on the National Mall

I got accused of blasheming Christ and someone tried to convert me

I stood with Michael, my boyfriend, and Olivia, my friend, on the security line at Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee Of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving, absorbing punishment from the sun. Then a stranger spoke softly into my ear.

“I won’t have you insult Jesus in front of me,” she said.

Unsure of what this person meant or if she was speaking to me, I tried to remember if any of us said anything that could be perceived as blasphemous. I didn’t think so. Then I heard her voice again.

“You don’t hear the word s-h-i-t in the Bible,” the stranger added.

We took a long, hot walk down to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to report on the event, part of a taxpayer-funded series celebrating America’s semiquincentennial this summer. This particular gathering focused on rededicating the country to Christ as a return to the supposed first principles of America.

I turned around. The stranger was an older Black woman, dressed in all white linen. She wore an American flag scarf, which she had braided into her light blonde wig.

“Excuse me, are you speaking to me?” I asked.

She looked at me with a stunned innocence.

“Are you sure you’re not hearing voices?” she asked.

“I don’t think so. I just heard a voice, and I turned around, and it’s the voice of the person I’m speaking to now, which is you,” I said and stuck my hand out for a shake. “What’s your name?”

Another woman behind her shook her head at me and gestured as if to say, don’t engage.

“Do you really want to do this right now?” the stranger replied.

“I’m just trying to cordially introduce myself,” I said.

“Are you a Christian?” she asked.

“No.” I said bluntly.

“I didn’t think so,” she said.

I turned back around to Michael and Olivia.

First announced by Trump back in December of last year, Rededicate 250 was organized by Freedom 250, one of the main organizing hubs created for celebrating America’s 250th birthday.

Freedom 250 is a public-private partnership. According to Mother Jones, Trump launched the organization as a way to avoid congressional oversight or required bipartisan participation, though some of its funding still comes from the government. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson spoke at the event. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio submitted video messages. On the ground, however, it was clear this event was catered to Christians only.

As we finally approached the inside, a man who had overheard my interaction with the stranger approached me and apologized on the woman’s behalf.

“Oh, that’s ok,” I said politely. “It’s a big city, there are a lot of people. Are you from around here?” He said he was.

“I’m a Messianic Jew,” he told me.

“Ah,” I said, “I’m a regular Jew.” Michael and Olivia made faces of stifled laughter.

“OK,” he responded. We stared at each other in a moment of awkward silence.

“Well, enjoy the event!” I said.

It was about 2:30 PM when we finally got inside, and people gathered on the bright green grass of the National Mall, setting up picnic blankets and beach chairs. The Christian MAGA masses baked in the heat near the concession stand selling mac-and-cheese stuffed pretzels and unpleasant looking pepperoni pizzas.

We walked in the direction of the stage. We were stunned by how few people seemed to actually attend Rededicate 250, especially in contrast to an hour and a half of waiting to get through security.

So many people I saw were wearing a Charlie Kirk freedom t-shirt. Even more people wore Make America Great Again hats. I also saw several people wearing some version of the Israeli flag. Others wore shirts that said “Jesus was Jewish” on it with “Jewish” written in blue letters. One middle-aged white man wore a t-shirt advertising a messianic Judaism ministry.

Rededicate 250 had a separate section for the press, but it was almost completely empty. I saw rows of tables that had been reserved for media outlets with no one sitting at them.

I started chatting with the older white woman named Joyce, who happened to be sitting next to me when we found some chairs that were closer to the stage. A three-time evangelical Trump voter, she came to DC from Connecticut, the first time she’d been here since she was a little girl. She said she was excited to witness what she described as a historically important event.

I asked her what she thought of the government these days. She spoke about ending “illegal” immigration, eliminating wasteful spending, and the MAGA-boosted Somali daycare scandal in Minnesota that inspired Trump’s ICE surge in Minneapolis and led to the death of two Americans, Alex Pretti and Renee Good.

“God is starting to clean it up,” she said.

As we spoke, a video played from the mainstage. It was a brief history of Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds, an American infantryman who was captured by the Nazis after the Battle of the Bulge during World War II. When prison guards ordered Jews to line up separately during morning roll call, Edmonds organized American prisoners to refuse.

Confronted by his Nazi captors, Edmonds stood firm, telling them, “We are all Jews here,” and if they wanted to kill him, they’d have to kill all the Americans. The guard backed down.

“He stood with his fellow Americans,” the video said in a deep booming voiceover, “and with the God who made each and every one of us in his image. Together, they faced down evil and won, reminding us that with God, all things are possible.”

A worship band from Liberty University took the stage. Joyce stood up, swaying to the music and raising her hands to the sky. When she sat back down, she tapped me again.

“Are you a believer?” she asked.

I’ve gotten this question before at right-wing events, so I mustered up all the cheerfulness I possibly could and braced myself.

“I’m Jewish,” I said.

“You could still be a believer,” she replied. I explained my family had been Jewish for a long time, and suffered a lot for it.

“But this is my partner, and he’s Catholic,” I said, gesturing to Michael. I was trying to buy some goodwill and back her off a little. “So I really appreciate the message of Christ.”

“Jesus was Jewish,” she said, “It’s more than just a message, it’s your salvation.”

Not knowing what to do, I thanked her. But she kept evangelizing, so I kept thanking her.

“I know your family suffered a lot, and with October 7th, but Jesus suffered too,” she said. Eventually, I felt so uncomfortable that I got up to take a walk around.

I saw a woman on the lawn with a Jewish prayer shawl (Tallit in Hebrew), slung over her shoulder. She was wearing a black ball cap with JESUS written in rhinestones, and sparkly cross earrings. She wore the Charlie Kirk Freedom shirt, and I introduced myself.

“Are you Jewish?” I asked.

“No, I’m not Jewish.”

“Why do you have a Tallit?”

“I identify – I’ve been grafted in.”

She told me her name was Angelic. She said people at her church wore prayer shawls. Then she described a tree she planted in her backyard that yields both green and red apples and said that was a metaphor for Jesus. I was having a hard time putting everything together in a way that made sense.

“I’ve been engrafted into the kingdom of Jewish, Jews and Gentiles,” she said.

I asked why she came all the way from Michigan for this event and she went on.

“It’s a war going on,” she said. “It’s good versus evil.”

“So you think there’s a spiritual war going on,” I said.

“It’s definitely a spiritual war,” she replied.

Angelic told me about her political activism, including volunteering for Turning Point USA and Black Voices for Trump. I needed to find some shade.

My hand

It’s one thing to know that our tax dollars are going directly to Christian nationalism; it’s another thing to experience it firsthand. The government describes Jews as strange but holy heathens, stumbling blocks on the path to an end-times fantasy. And their most dedicated supporters personalized this apocalyptic worldview directly to my face. The people I spoke to, even those who put on the vestments of my faith, seemed to have no conception of a living modern Jew who would go on being Jewish.

Freedom 250, an extension of the MAGA government, staged the event as a declaration of Christian supremacy, imagining a world where there are no other faiths outside of worshipping Jesus. But somehow Jews were still at the center of this project. I kept hearing and seeing us without hearing and seeing us. Perhaps that’s why that crazy lady in the security line asked me if I was hearing voices.