A visiting Israeli author painted a bleak picture of non-Orthodox Jewish life in the US during a New York City book signing hosted by The Algemeiner last month.

Tuvia Tenenbom — whose newest book is titled The Lies They Tell, which details a trip he took across America — told the crowd at the Center for Jewish History, “In state after state, temple after temple, what I saw and what I witnessed was a nightmare. You see rabbis, or so-called rabbis, leaders, supposed leaders, standing at a podium and all they can tell to their listeners is that Israel is an apartheid state and that Judaism is racism. That’s what they preach.”

Later, he added, “When you see some anti-Jewish thing, if you dig deep and put a magnifying lens to see who’s behind it, over and over and over you find a Jew, and that’s frightening.”

A full video of the event can be viewed below: