Mexico just elected a Jewish president. What other countries can claim Jewish heads of state?
Claudia Sheinbaum was elected the first first woman and first Jewish president of Mexico on Monday. Photo by José Castañares/ObturadorMX via Getty Images
By Rebecca Massel June 4, 2024
Claudia Sheinbaum, elected this week as Mexico’s first woman and first Jewish president, is joining a short list of four other Jewish — or Jew-ish — people outside of Israel currently serving as presidents or prime ministers.
History provides a much longer list. Benjamin Disraeli, who was born Jewish but became Anglican as an adolescent, served two stints as prime minister of Great Britain. Léon Blum was prime minister of France before and after World War II. But dozens of lesser known Jews have led their countries, including Ricardo Maduro in Honduras from 2002 to 2006, Léon Kengo wa Dondo in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo in the 1980s and early 1990s, and Sophie Wilmès, prime minister of Belgium from 2019 to 2020.
Sheinbaum, who won in a landslide and will be sworn into office in October, has minimized her Jewish background on the campaign trail, but still faced antisemitism, including the baseless charge that she was not fully Mexican.
Here are the four other leaders now serving — excluding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog of Israel, the world’s only Jewish state — and their connections to Judaism.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine
Zelenskyy, elected in 2019, has described growing up in an “ordinary Soviet Jewish family.” Though he did not refer often to his Jewishness during his campaign, it unnerved many Ukrainian Jews, who recalled anti-Jewish pogroms and feared they would be blamed for any perceived or actual government shortcomings.
After Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022, Zelenskyy began speaking more publicly about his Jewish heritage — and directly to Jews in Israel and the diaspora. A day after a Russian attack near Babi Yar, where over 30,000 Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, Zelenskyy posted in Hebrew on Telegram, “This is why it’s important for millions of Jews around the world not to stay silent in the face of such sights.” He addressed the Knesset to appeal for Israel’s help. And After Hamas’ attacked Israel on Oct. 7, Zelenskyy declared its “unquestionable right” to defend itself.
Laurentino Cortizo, President of Panama
Cortizo is a practicing Christian, though his mother, Esther Cohen, is of Jewish descent. While he has not embraced his own Jewish heritage, he has good relations with Panama’s Jewish community of about 13,000, and hosted a Rosh Hashanah celebration in 2022.
Mikhail Mishustin, Prime Minister of Russia
Mishustin, who took office in 2020, is the son of a Russian-Jewish father but does not often discuss his Jewish heritage in Russia, where antisemitism is rife. In May 2024, Russian President Vladimir Putin reappointed Mishustin as prime minister.
Gabriel Attal, Prime Minister of France
Attal’s father is of Tunisian-Jewish descent and part of his father’s family was deported during the Holocaust, but he was baptized and raised as an Orthodox Christian by his mother. Attal, who took office in January, said he no longer considers himself religious and recalls his father speaking of how “God died at Auschwitz.” He said his father told him, “Perhaps you’re Orthodox but you’ll feel Jewish all your life, mainly because you’ll suffer antisemitism because of your name.”
He faced a slew of antisemitic and homophobic comments on social media after he was nominated. In March, Attal condemned pro-Palestinian campus protests at Sciences Po, his alma mater, saying, “I will never let a French university become the mouthpiece for a North American ideology which, under the guise of modernity, promotes intolerance, rejects debate, and curbs freedom of expression.” And last month, speaking at a dinner for French Jewish leaders, he denounced rising antisemitism in France and accused leftists of “stirring up hatred.”
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