In Rabbi Shimon Axel Wahnish, Argentinean president Javier Milei found a mentor — and the perfect ambassador to Israel

Photos: Sinergia Media productora audiovisual

Sometime in late April 2023, with the Argentine autumn under way, a non-Jewish economist-turned-politician with a wild hairdo picked up the phone to a local rabbi to share an outlandish plan. Then-congressman Javier Milei, a libertarian economist who’d spent years railing against his country’s establishment, told his mentor Rabbi Shimon Axel Wahnish that he was planning on running for the presidency of Argentina.

The notion of the former economist ascending to the Casa Rosada was so absurd that the rabbi jokingly upped the ante: “If you become president, I’ll be your ambassador to Israel,” he quipped.

But to Milei — deadly serious about upending Argentina’s political order — the idea was no joke. “Who better than my rabbi to represent my government to Israel?” he replied.

Against all the odds, both sides of the improbable pact came to pass. On November 19, 2023, Hurricane Milei made landfall over Buenos Aires. The much-mocked outsider clinched the presidential race in a runoff, taking over 56 percent of the votes to become the world’s first libertarian president.

Not only did Argentina wake up to a president who is one of the most colorful figures on the international scene — the country is likely to end up with the world’s most unusual ambassador. Subject to Senate confirmation, Rabbi Wahnish — a community rav who’s active in kiruv and was a talmid of Rav Moshe Shapira ztz”l — will move to Israel with his family, and step out into an unfamiliar world of cocktail receptions and diplomacy.

And if all goes to plan, it won’t only be the ambassador’s external garb that will be different — the location will be, too. Alongside President Milei’s promise to break with his predecessors’ socialist economic policies is his pledge to move the country’s embassy to Jerusalem.

That commitment — which will boost Israel’s standing in a region where it has traditionally struggled — is symbolic of the philo-Semitism of one of the most powerful new figures in Latin America. In his first interview after being proclaimed the new president of Argentina, Milei went further; when the journalist asked him if he wanted to thank someone, the new leader replied, “Yes, Hashem.”

The road ahead for the world’s first rabbinical ambassador is paved with unknowns. There’s no precedent within living memory for such a significant international figure to declare interest in conversion, as Javier Milei has, and by extension, there’s simply no playbook for his chareidi rabbi-ambassador to follow. Yet whatever diplomatic turbulence the Argentinean rabbi encounters, his “Next Year in Jerusalem” will be one to remember.